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  • As opposed to a roofer I've met who did a £16k roof and the client just plain refused to pay.

    My grandad was still doing carpentry jobs here and there well into his late 60s, I remember he asked me to go and give him a hand picking something up in his transit from a well-to-do area somewhere between chelmsford and southend as it need an extra pair of hands lifting.

    Turned out it was a lovely handmade spiral staircase he'd made that connected the two floors of what was easily a 750k house in the early 00's.

    He'd got all the materials up front, MADE IT, installed it and then the posh cunt who hired him and her prick husband refused to pay him for the job unless he gave them a significant discount because they thought he was just an old man with a dodgy hip and an easy pushover.

    turns out the reason he'd asked me along (a 20st lump with a shaved head) was to make sure they didn't try to get physical with him when he went back to "get his tools" (that he'd left there expressly for a reason to return when they'd not paid him on completion day). He then explained that as they hadn't paid a penny for anything the staircase was his property and I stood in the hall between them and the staircase while he unbolted the whole thing and we split it into its various sections and loaded it onto the van and left them to figure out how to get up to the second floor of their gaff from now on for themselves.

    When they called him to relent and ask him to put it back he made them pay a hefty additional fee for the removal and reinstallation for both our time and told them he wasn't available for a week to put it back in.

  • Top man! In a similar vein, I know a guy who designs and builds staircases. A client took his drawings and gave the work to someone else. The drawings provided were 75mm out on purpose, the client tried to sue, they failed.

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