There may have been a time Mel Gibson knew what women wanted when he made that movie, but we won’t go there.  Today I am thinking in terms of homes, and how so many women dream of having a home of their own.  I know I do–and it started when I was a little girl with the Barbie Townhouse I had.  As we grow up, some dreams change a little (we may not all still be after the white picket fence that June Cleaver had), but they never die.

And neither has the dream of my friend Amy Parbury.  Unlike another friend of mine, Natasha Madison, Amy did not find anything so pleasant as a companion when she hired a contractor to do some simple patchwork in her home.  Quite the opposite.  Rather than being the stuff that dreams are made of, Amy’s home became the source of untold frustration and heartache.  So why would I want to blog about such a disaster, and more importantly, why would Amy want to relive it by telling me her story?  It’s simple.  “We [women] have to protect each other,” she told me over lunch last week.  “When I purchased my home [around 2004], the chief demographic of home buyers was single women.  Maybe there are other women out there who will be or have been taken advantage of.  If sharing my story helps them, I want to do that.”

It all started with a plumber she hired, who, as it turned out, had never been the lead on a job, and really didn’t know what he was doing.  So Amy hired a contractor for what started out as the simple job of patching the holes left behind by the plumber, repairing some sky lights, and other small jobs.  I should say here that Amy did everything she was supposed to do: she got references (the guy came recommended by a realtor she knew at the time); and she made sure his license was current, among other items recommended both to hire a contractor, and to make sure the work had been done properly.

Shortly after hiring him, Amy returned from a business trip to find that the sky lights in her back room had been removed completely which meant that the entire room was flooded due to several days of rainfall.  Her furniture and carpet were ruined. The contractor was nowhere to be found.

When she finally was able to track him down, he tried to rectify the situation by offering her what she considered a good bid to then completely rebuild the back room.  Now the contract had grown, and other problems, unrelated to the plumber or the flood, emerged, including water leaks due to the incorrect construction of the slab foundation that the room was built on.

At first the work seemed to proceed normally, but then the contractor began not showing up and not completing various tasks.  After complaining to Amy that she would need to rewire the house in order for him to complete his work, she came home one day to find the walls demolished down to the studs and the wiring completely destroyed. And–you guessed it–the contractor had disappeared again. Amy was without heat and electricity, and there were no walls on the back of her house.

All of this was exacerbated by a series of difficult personal experiences for Amy, and was followed by a two-year process of seeking legal help for the situation, including an 8-month investigation by the state contractor’s board, a $4,000-dollar attorney bill, and finally one detective who was able to finally find and arrest the contractor.

“All I wanted was a little bit of the American Dream,” says Amy, who had saved for her entire adulthood to that point to buy the house.  “The worst part was feeling helpless.”

Today, there is still a temporary wall on Amy’s back room.  While the contractor has served jail time, it’s unlikely Amy will ever recover any part of the estimated $100,000 that this situation has cost her (about $30,000 of which was cash and stolen building materials). “But it’s a choice.  I could play the victim, but I am determined to make this work.”  What that will mean is that she will probably not be able to put as much into renovating the house as she would have liked.  Also it means she will be doing a lot more of the work herself.  “I’ve learned a lot,” she says. “I’ve learned to patch walls, do roofing work, I’ve learned about wood, stains, floors, and foundations.”  But other lessons she wants to pass along, especially to other women, are how important it is to educate oneself to recognize bad work before you pay.  Amy also says she will never pay any money up front again, and she will never pay in full until a job is finished, because she lost two-thirds of the entire fee because the contractor took off in the middle of the job–twice.

Amy also has the loving support of her partner Jeremy, because of whom she says the house has gone from being a pitfall that burdened her, to a project she is inspired to finish in order to improve their life together.  Amy will need a lot more than Paige Hemmis’s (Extreme Home Makeover) pink tool belt, but she’ll do it one step at a time, starting with winterizing projects that include sanding, repairing eaves, painting, and repairing dry rot. Next on the list would be tackling the floors along with some patching in the front room.  “Now it’s just a matter of keeping up.  Sometimes the projects dictate themselves.”

I don’t pretend that the only victims of this kind of malpractice are women, or that women are the only ones who want that slice of the American Dream.  But, like many forms of mistreatment that we would hope do not exist in the year 2009, victimization of women still does.  And believe it or not, Amy’s story isn’t finished.  I hope to complete another interview with her during my time as guest blogger.

In the meantime, I’ll never again complain about having to hang a picture or plunge the toilet.  As a matter of fact, I feel inspired to learn to do a whole lot more.

Last 5 posts by KellyThacher

• O Tannenbaum . . . - December 23rd, 2009
• Lighting a Candle - December 22nd, 2009
• All For Show - December 21st, 2009
• Faking it with Flowers - December 20th, 2009
• Color Clinic - December 19th, 2009

Author: Kelly Thacher

Kelly has been a writer since she was in grade school where she received early recognition for her Young Author's project. Magazines like Home Entertainment, Luxury Consumer Electronics, Vertical Living, Luxury Home and the Robb Report were happy to have Kelly's editing talents on various projects. A series of career twists and turns has offered her invaluable experience in journalism, magazine and book publishing, and fiction writing.

Kelly Thacher has written 30 articles for us.