Contractor Destroys The Bathroom He Just Built After Customer Refuses To Pay Him
He claimed to have received no payment for the work he did.
TerryJ / Getty Images via Canva, Golubovy / Shutterstock Working as an entrepreneur can be difficult, especially since you are responsible for every aspect of your business. Success is dependent on your ability to adopt and follow effective practices when it comes to delivering exemplary services and budgeting.
In 2021, contractor Terry James Gregory, co-owner of Dream Home Remodels, was beside himself with anger when a homeowner, Amber Trucke, refused to pay him for the time he spent and materials he used in remodeling their bathroom.
In the video, originally posted to the r/PublicFreakout subreddit and later shared by TikToker Emma Irakoze, the business owner is seen smashing the walls in a bathroom with a sledgehammer while the person holding the camera, Trucke’s roommate, begs him to stop.
In response, he turns to them and says, “You’re still not going to pay me? No contractor will fix that because you refuse to pay me”.
As the narrator explains what is going on, the resident can be heard saying, “I get it," something Gregory doesn’t believe since he is the one not getting paid for his work. The woman behind the camera continues trying to talk the irate entrepreneur down and stop the destruction.
Seething and distraught, the man continues to pound away, only stopping to say, “We put weeks of work into this — thousands of dollars into this.” He turns from one wall to the next, knocking gaping holes in the tile and asking if he is going to be paid or not.
The homeowner accuses him of property destruction, but he calls the accusation ‘impossible’ since the property he is tearing up belongs to him.
She later insinuates that the man was in her home without permission, having walked in instead of being invited in as he had initially claimed. Unbothered by the claim, Gregory continues to break apart the tile he had installed in the bathroom.
The construction company’s co-owner, Jordan Cazares, stood in the doorway, marveling at how wasteful it was to dismantle such “good work.” Nevertheless, Cazares took no action to stop her boss from continuing to hit the walls with his sledgehammer.
She even justified the destruction saying that it is how the company “needs” to take the work back since it was built so solidly and won’t just “fall off” on its own.
After satisfactorily ensuring that the non-paying client couldn’t make use of the bathroom he had remodeled, the contractor claimed he was “more than happy to be done” with the woman’s home. Yet, he took several more swings for good measure before handing his assistant some tools to carry away and reiterating that no other contractor would fix the bathroom after her refusal to pay and leaving the premises.
It turned out that Trucke had paid some of the costs upfront.
The narrative that the homeowner had simply refused to pay was not entirely true. The total cost for the bathroom renovation was $7,555 and the customer had paid $3,330 upfront. Upon completion of the work, Trucke was dissatisfied and apparently asked for more time to inspect it before paying the remaining balance, according to the New York Post.
Co-owner Cazares claimed there had been a breakdown in communication and that the customer had never said she wasn’t happy with the finished product. But Trucke cast doubt on that assertion when she shared the text exchanges she’d had with Cazares requesting time to inspect and complaining about paint on the ceiling, grout on the counters and sinks, holes in the door frame, and black mold.
Photo: Facebook / Amber Trucke
Trucke also shared several pictures of the uneven grout and messy tiles on Facebook, a testament to the fact the contractor did shoddy work when renovating the bathroom.
The homeowner got her bathroom re-remodeled for free.
After the story went viral, contrary to Gregory’s assertion that no other contractor would touch the bathroom, several stepped forward and volunteered to fix the mess that the angry contractor had made of Trucke’s bathroom.
Jason McDaniel of Stoneman Construction flew in from Oregon to oversee the repairs. He told Inside Edition, “There’s never a circumstance where it’s okay for somebody to be violent in somebody else’s home or in somebody else’s presence, for that matter.”
Gregory was also confronted outside of Walmart for commentary on the situation, but was defensive and eventually refused to comment. He did continue to claim he had not been paid, something the reporter pushed back on, citing the $3,330 he’d been given upfront by Trucke.
In the end, Gregory was sentenced to spend 15 days in jail and three years of supervised probation. Cazares pled guilty to criminal mischief but wasn't charged.
Trucke got the bathroom she wanted, and the contractor potentially lost clients and had to weather a self-imposed storm of bad publicity over something that could have been worked out with good customer service.
NyRee Ausler is a writer from Seattle, Washington. She covers lifestyle, relationship, and human-interest stories that readers can relate to and that bring social issues to the forefront for discussion.