Builders wrecked a £300,000 Victorian home by ripping off the roof when asked to fix a leak and even persuaded the owner to drive them to a 1980s Butlins weekend.
What was once a beautiful Victorian property in one of the Midlands most sought-after postcodes is now a scene of utter carnage.
Dominic Gauden lost every last penny of the thousands left to him in his mother’s will and says he cannot even afford the new headstone planned for her grave due to the spiralling cost of the building work.
The 51-year-old claims he only wanted a leak fixed, but the man he employed took the roof off the 124-year-old semi-detached house where, Mr Gauden had lived his entire life in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley.
After shelling out £28,100, Mr Gauden claims he ended up with a gaping hole where the back bay window once was, no garage doors, interior walls stripped bare of plaster and flooding so severe the fire brigade has been called to the gutted house.
Dominic Gauden outside his ruined home which was left with flooding, a gaping hole where the back bay window should be and no garage doors
Mr Gauden standing with the mess he says has been left by builders in his home and garden
Scaffolding which had been erected for three-and-a-half years outside the home in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley
That flooding was the result of a failure to install guttering which caused a ceiling to collapse, the debris seriously damaged a piano, ruined valuable rugs, and caused plaster to fall from walls, Mr Gauden said.
Scaffolding has been erected around the four-bedroom home, valued before the builders moved in at £300,000 – for three-and-a-half tears.
Mr Gauden claims the work was brokered by a pub acquaintance. He is unsure of the real identity of the ‘master builder’ who carried out the work.
He was not given a business card, he did not even have an address. He shelled out a stream of cash-in-hand payments without asking for receipts.
Mr Gauden said his judgement was clouded by grief over the death of his mother, Wendy, and medication for depression.
He said: ‘I have spent all that my mum left me in her will,’ said the volunteer at Tyseley Railway Museum.’All the money my mum saved up and it’s just gone.
The shocking state of Mr Gauden’s house in College Road Birmingham from the outside shows piles of rubble and bricks
Damage to the ceiling inside Mr Gauden’s house which was worth around £300,000
The Victorian property in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley saw £28,100 spent on the building repairs
‘I’m in a daze. I feel ashamed and embarrassed about the whole thing. I blame myself for being talked into it.
‘Mum would be turning in her grave. She would never have allowed this to happen – she was assertive and strong-minded. I feel I have let her down.
‘There are no light thoughts, only dark ones. I’ve tried to block it out with anti-depressants. I’m gutted.’
To his shock, Mr Gauden was told the property needed ‘underpinning’ – something a surveyor from Birmingham City Council has since rubbished.
That urgent work began and ended with a large trench being dug. Garage doors were removed – and the gaping hole remains.
In the winter of 2016, one water-logged ceiling gave way – and fell on Mr Gauden’s treasured piano. In all, two ceilings need replacing and both the front and back doors became so bloated and twisted by damp, they would not shut.
Pictured above is the mess outside the house left by builders. He was also told the house needed underpinning
Mr Gauden says he paid in cash and did not get receipts for the amounts he paid the builders
Mr Gauden, who says shame and lack of finance have stopped him having the handiwork put right, added bitterly: ‘I feel contempt for him and contempt – self-loathing – for myself.
He said: ‘It is a terrible job. I’ve had sleepless nights over this business, it’s hindered my recovery massively.
‘I trusted him. He was quite reserved. He went in the attic, looked up and said he could see light. The roof was off in a week.’
Mr Gauden even drove the builders to a Butlins holiday park and spent the weekend with them, even acting as designated driver for that mini-break.
He said: ‘They got me to go to the pub all the time,’ he said. ‘Really awful pubs in Kings Heath, places you’d never see me drinking in.
‘Once they said they’d got tickets to an 1980s weekend in Butlins. I really didn’t want to go, but I did. It was like a horror story – they spent all the time in the bookies.’
The events manager says the builder’s card advertised his services as a gutter-cleaning expert.
The workmen did replace tiling ripped away during those first days of repairs in December, 2015.
But within a month, he says, they had left the site, the boss citing a catalogue of personal problems.
Mr Gauden belatedly contacted West Midlands Police and Action Fraud, a public body set up to probe allegations of malpractice
