When a do-it-yourself home repair job goes bad, turn to the experts

You’re a homeowner. Pretty good with your hands. You built the family dog house, for goodness sake. So why not put in new cabinets and a sink yourself in a kitchen long past its prime? Look at the money you’ll save.

How hard can it be? A few weekends of labor. Maybe your bowling buddy, Joe, can lend his expertise. He’s also a wiz with his hands.

You disassemble the old cabinet and sink, but the two of you struggle to put together the new material. You tighten the nuts and bolts as best you could, and voila ... a leak in the pipes. The kitchen floods. Turns out you used the wrong supplies. And, you had a bad floor, too.

“I hear those stories all the time,” said David Dougherty, of J. Dougherty and Son, a Glassboro contractor. “You cannot put in a kitchen on top of a bad foundation. You need to fix the floor before continuing.”

Dougherty is not alone in hearing such horror stories. Do-it-yourself projects turn into nightmares all the time, financially and otherwise.

Maybe you discover the new pipe doesn’t fit on the old because the clerk at the plumbing supply store neglected to tell you about the differences.

“A homeowner will know to order a faucet, but does not specify enough details. The guy behind the counter might not advise that you need a certain gasket, especially if adding something new to old plumbing,” said Wendy Amiano, of Tabernacle-based Amiano & Son Construction.

You might rip out a kitchen wall to add new tiles, and discover old plywood behind it, Amiano noted. Tile can’t adhere to wood, so it has to be taken out. “These are unforeseen situations that the homeowner never knew about.”

A homeowner re-doing a kitchen in Marlton quickly realized the job is not like HGTV. He was a lawyer in over his head, said Kyle Baptiste, of Next Level Remodeling, LLC, in Cherry Hill.

“He did not do it himself to save money. He felt competent. I said I would do just as good at litigating as you can do in remodeling. A lot of work he did, we ripped out. It was not done to code or it was done wrong,” Baptiste said.

Here’s another tale of woe. A homeowner wants a new tub in the bathroom, so he tears out the old one and discovers the one bought in a box store doesn’t fit, Dougherty said.

“Or maybe you find out there was termite damage, or the plumbing was old and needs to be replaced. You had no clue what was behind the tub,” he added.

Amiano had a recent client who wanted to remodel his own bathroom. He was retired with plenty of construction experience.

“When you demolish anything with plumbing, certain things need to be capped off. He didn’t and flooded the bathroom,” she noted.

Chris Conway, from 1 Creation Construction in Mantua, said “Everyone thinks they can remodel a bathroom themselves. We have to come in and tell them it’s not correct. It would have cost less money if they left it alone to begin.”

Add to that the aggravation that comes from the kitchen or bathroom staying out of order for another few weeks while a contractor comes to the rescue.

“You can see it on their faces,” Conway said. “I’ve been on jobs in which the family is well-intentioned and do not believe they are completely over their heads and they won’t throw in the towel. They continue to try and fix it.”

Then there are the homeowners who won’t admit they were the culprits. They’re often embarrassed and say a contractor did it wrong and they fired the person, Conway explained. “I say we’ll sue the contractor, then it comes out the husband or an uncle did it.”

Code enforcement officers try and advise the do-it-yourselfer, said Angelo Martilini, Glassboro zoning officer.

“Officials have to make a judgment whether an applicant is capable of doing work themselves,” he said.

If issues develop, code enforcement attempts to talk the homeowner through the process.

“We want to help them do the right things through inspection,” Martilini explained.

Another avenue is the do-it-yourselfer who works on part of the job and then turns the rest over to a contractor. “Our guys can be in and out in two, three days max. But when the homeowner gets involved first, 95 percent of the time it extends our completion date,” Amiano said.

Yet it isn’t always about do-it-yourselfers. Sometimes homeowners turn to a contractor, just not one knowledgeable enough to do the job right. To save money, Mr. and Mrs. Homeowner seeks out inexpensive contractors, Dougherty said.

“Pick-up contractors can get themselves into a jam. You hope for the best outcome but a lot of times, it does not happen,” he added.

Steve Feigeles, of Williamstown-based Premier Builders & Remodeling, Inc., often bails homeowners out of shoddy work by contractors.

“A natural response is ‘I want to go after them.’ A lot of the hires, they have nothing but a pick-up truck. The guy is not licensed, has no assets. It’s rare a qualified contractor screwed up,” he said.

Still, unhappy homeowners can file a complaint with the state against such contractors, said Neal Buccino, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs. The state has the authority to charge a contractor for consumer fraud.

“It helps hold them accountable. We can ask the court to impose civil penalties and restitution,” he noted. “Any contractor providing home improvement without registration is in violation of the law.”

Reach William Sokolic at (856) 486-2437 or wsokolic@courierpostonline.com or on Twitter @WilliamSokolic

SIDE BAR

If you are not satisfied, call a professional. Log onto www.nari.org, the website for the National Association of The Remodeling Industry, whose members are not only certified but have amassed points for taking continuing education classes to maintain the certification, said Kelley Evens, of Aurora Kitchens & Interiors in Somerville, and president of the Central New Jersey chapter of NARI.

“If they try and fix it themselves, it generally costs more time and money then if you hired pro in the first place. Pros have township contacts, which makes it easier to get approval for construction. Pros are familiar with requirements in place for homeowners.”

Consumers also need guidance on the materials needed and the costs. Evens said.

“An amateur might have bad products, but a pro knows how to handle that.”