The Best Episodes of Cowboy Builders

Melinda and Dom are in Eastbourne helping a single parent whose life has been turned upside down. Following his wife's death, 50 year­old-chef David Kon was left to bring up his three daughters alone. But their Eastbourne semi was not big enough, so David decided to extend into the loft to give each of his girls a room of their own. Unfortunately for the Kon family, the builder they paid £31,000 to do the job botched the build and left them with an unfinished death trap above their heads. The stress of the situation has driven the family to despair and David feels like he has failed his children. It is now Melinda and Dom's job to rebuild the loft, catch the cowboy and get this family's life back on track.

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Melinda and Dom head to Bath to rescue single mum Jenni Rossi. The 46-year-old school secretary wanted a better home for her and her teenage son, so she decided to remortgage her three-bedroom townhouse to pay for a large open-plan kitchen extension. Jenni obtained a number of quotes from construction companies, but none of them came in below £70,000 - well out of Jenni's price range. When a builder offered to do the job for £32,000, therefore, she jumped at the chance. Sadly, the builder Jenni had hired left the job unfinished. By the time she had already paid £26,000, all Jenny had to show for her money was an empty shell. Building inspectors visited the site and decided that the standard of work was so poor it would have to be condemned. Jenni tried contacting the builder, but received no response. She then discovered that the cowboy had moved house, leaving no forwarding address. With nowhere to turn, Jenni hit rock bottom and has spent the past six months living in little more than a building site. Fortunately, help is at hand. Upon arrival in Bath, Melinda takes on the challenge of rebuilding the extension, giving it a big-budget makeover. But as her builders and designers start work, they discover a number of shocking fundamental flaws. Budget and schedule soon go out the window, but Melinda will stop at nothing to get the best for Jenni - even if that means persuading sympathetic local businesses to donate their services for free. Meanwhile, consumer champion Dom sets about hunting down the construction cheat in an attempt to get Jenni her money back. But since this particular rogue has been AWOL for six months, tracking him down is going to take some serious detective work.

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Melinda Messenger and Dominic Littlewood go to Warrington to help Sheila, who was left devastated when builders abandoned her extension half-finished.

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This week, Melinda Messenger and Dominic Littlewood meet a family from Sheffield who were left with a derelict house and thousands of pounds’ worth of debt.

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This week, Melinda and Dom meet a family that has endured 18 months of misery at the hands of a cowboy builder. Melinda is keen to transform their home from crater-scarred bomb site to luxury bungalow, but will structural problems see the rebuild ended before it has even begun?

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This week, Melinda Messenger and Dominic Littlewood head to the market town of Dunstable in Bedfordshire, where Angus and Tracy are on the brink of collapse. Since a cowboy trashed their extension 12 months ago, the couple’s relationship has been under pressure and may not survive the renovation.

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Melinda Messenger and Dominic Littlewood head to South Gloucestershire, where Stuart and Michelle are in desperate need of help. After paying a builder £43,500 for a two-storey extension, the couple were left with an unsafe and unsanitary shell.

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Melinda and Dom meet Simon and Cheryl, a couple who put their dream of adoption on ice after a cowboy with the gift of the gab promised them the Earth, but left them with nothing but a hazardous home.

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In the final instalment of the series, the team takes on two renovation jobs at once when Melinda and Dom uncover the extent of the destruction left behind by a Derbyshire cowboy.

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This week Dom and Sheree are on the outskirts of Cardiff, helping a family who have been left to freeze and live in a half-finished extension with no central heating for three years. Care-worker Julia wanted to extend her home to make room for her ageing mother Mary, who had just returned from living in Australia after having a heart-attack. She contracted a builder, the son of someone she thought was a friend, and paid him £64,000 to build a two storey wraparound extension. Six months later, the builder left the job, taking all her life savings and leaving Julia, her mother Mary and her teenage son Chris with an open shell of a home. While Sheree struggles to make her budget stretch far enough to finish this massive job, Dom investigates the cowboy and discovers he may have fled to Thailand. He also meets other victims of the same builder, including a man whose life has fallen apart after the builder left his sewage system leaking into his garden.

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Bhavner and her husband Kirit had always known that they would need to extend their small family home when their three sons were too old to share a room. The extension would prove costly for a travel agent and a shop assistant, costing the couple some £30,000. “My dream was that all three children could have a room to themselves,” Kirit says. In 2007, the couple contacted a builder with a good reputation within Leicester’s Asian community. But the unscrupulous charlatan left the family with a garden that looked like a warzone. Instead of the planned lounge, bedroom and bathroom, he erected four walls and left the extension with no roof, no floor and no plumbing. To make space for his shoddy workmanship, he knocked down the family conservatory and damaged the existing roof, leaving a life-threatening stretch of live wires and sockets exposed to the elements. Bhavner began to suffer from panic attacks as her family spent two winters in an unfinished house, taking turns to spend the night on the floor. Dom is determined to bring the builder to justice, but he is nowhere to be found, and has been operating under multiple company names. As Dom meets up with some of the builder’s other victims, he begins to build up a picture of the man. The cowboy has burned through Leicester’s Asian community, taking people’s money and leaving a mess of unfinished, dangerous workmanship in his wake. One 76-year-old customer borrowed money from his family and cashed in his pension to pay for a kitchen extension. The job was left unfinished and the gas disconnected, with the pensioner left to rely on his neighbours for six months. Dom also meets Ash, who suspects that the builder is trying to scam as many people as possible before he flees the country to live with his wife in India. Sheree is determined to give Bhavner and Kirit the home they paid for, but new project manager John is worried that it could strain his resources. The team allocates a whopping £22,000 to the project, almost all of which will be spent on building work. Sheree is left to round up furniture donations from local vendors. Once the extension has been completed, there will be 500 square feet to decorate, so Sheree turns on the charm and heads to town to find a deal. Despite her reservations, she has big plans for the place. “This family are not going to know what hit them,” she says. “It is going to be fabulous.” Dom is on edge. Despite a seemingly never-ending trail of victims, he can’t track down the renegade builder. If the cowboy has left for India, the game could already be up. Dom finally tracks down a former neighbour, who claims to have seen the dodgy builder a few days ago. With the culprit still in Britain, there is still hope to bring him to justice. “The net is drawing in,” Dom declares...

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Dominic Littlewood and Sheree Murphy continue to track down renegade builders and rescue their unfortunate victims. This week, the pair head to Warwickshire to assist the Collins family. While Dominic embarks on an investigation to track down the cowboy, Sheree works tirelessly to rebuild the family home until it is once again a happy and safe place to live. This week, it is as clear as ever that the damage caused by rogue builders runs far deeper than bad workmanship. In Warwickshire, Rob and Wendy Collins have had their home wrecked and their lives put at risk by an unscrupulous builder. Having been plunged into debt and lost countless nights of sleep over the state of their property, the couple do not know where to turn. Luckily, Dominic and Sheree are on hand to help. “She fixes the houses, I chase the bad guys,” explains Dom. Upon arrival at the scaffold-ridden home, builder John takes a look around the loft conversion, which the couple had hoped would improve their lives by affording them more space. Instead, they have been left with trapped electrical wires that pose a serious fire risk, a vital supporting beam that is too small to bear the weight of the roof, and a fragile floor that threatens to cave in on daughter Amber’s bedroom. In fact, Rob’s cardboard model of the desired loft room is in better shape than the actual building. Without further delay, the family moves out and the team begins the mammoth task of rebuilding the botched conversion. After salvaging what they can of the half-constructed floor, the builders get stuck into strengthening, boarding and insulating the loft room until it is finally structurally sound and ready for furnishing. Downstairs, Sheree races against time to redecorate the rest of the house. Furthermore, she faces a battle with chief builder John as she tries to stretch the budget to include another bedroom and the bathroom. "Cue the chaos! As our deadline draws near, we’ve got furniture to build, rooms to dress – and I’m sticking to my word with the bathroom,” she declares. In order to raise more funds, Sheree heads into town and throws herself at the mercy of local traders. “Four rooms to decorate now. No flooring, no carpet, no money,” she says. Luckily, local suppliers are more than happy to assist a family in need, meaning Sheree returns with flooring, carpets, wallpaper and furniture – all for free. But with only 24 hours left to go, will the renovation be completed in time? While Sheree and the building team have been transforming Rob and Wendy’s home into the property they deserve, Dominic has been busy investigating the dodgy builder – who it seems has upset more than one family. The cowboy has been sued in the past and disqualified from running a company. As a sole trader, he has a history of leaving jobs unfinished, erecting unsound structures and avoiding all responsibility for the lives he has turned upside down. However, Dom is adamant that the builder’s trail of destruction will end here. Armed with a dossier of the builder’s shoddy work, Dom confronts him and exposes him to the nation.

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In Dorset, Melinda and Dom meet a grandmother who entrusted a builder with creating an attic conversion where she could recover in peace from a gruelling course of chemotherapy. However, four months later he walked off the job, leaving the family's home, and their lives, in tatters.

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This week Dom and Melinda come to the aid of a couple in north-west London, who need to complete a loft conversion and a downstairs extension to give them the space to move their sick grandfather into the family home. The cowboy builder featured in this episode is called John Guerin. The limited companies he trades as, or has formerly traded as, include: Bluewood Constructions Ltd Greyfox Project Management Ltd St Malory Projects Ltd Wynchwood Design & Development Ltd Blue Ferne Construction Ltd Merlyn Refurbishment Litd De Guerin Contruction & Design Ltd

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Melinda and Dom come to the rescue of single mother Pam from Camberley, Surrey. Pam was forced to give up the pursuit of her dream job when a cowboy's actions left her on the brink of financial ruin and living in a structurally unsound home.

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In Glasgow, Melinda and Dom meet couple Natalie and Rob, whose timber-framed extension was left to rot when a cowboy builder of tender years abruptly downed tools and scarpered. As Melinda tackles the first timber-framed house she has ever worked on, Dom faces his own challenge in the form of the upstart cowboy, who is the youngest ever seen on the show.

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In Lewisham, south London, Dom and Melinda meet couple Cathy and Stuart and their two young children. The family's beautiful Victorian terraced home was left structurally unsound after a cowboy builder refused to finish the job and escaped with their life savings.

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Dom returns to Cardiff to have another crack at catching a cowboy who last time slipped through his grasp. He also revisits the homeowners whose house was damaged by the rogue. Julia and her family were left without heating for three years. How much have their lives changed since Dom and Mel helped them out? The Cowboy Builders featured in the update show have traded under the following business names: - David Goymer of Pevensey bay, East Sussex has traded as Bay Building Limited - Tony McMahon of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire has traded as Phoenix Building Services (Bucks) Limited and Black Cat Construction (MK) Limited - Neil Smart based in Cardiff has traded as Axbridge Design Ltd These builders are not related to any other companies with similar names elsewhere in the UK.

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Dom and Melinda are in Balham to help a pair of newlyweds who had plans to extend their ground floor flat. Following the death of her mother, Sarah and her partner Stuart decided to use the inheritance money to extend their home in south London. They paid their builders £85,000 of a £95,000 contract, but were left with an unfinished shell and severe structural problems. Due to shoddy building work, the entire three-storey block of flats in which the couple live is in danger of collapse. The state of the building is so bad that before Dom and Melinda are even allowed access to the building, a structural engineer insists that emergency props are installed to safely support the walls. Melinda and her team plan to fix the botched work and complete the extension. However, these efforts are thwarted at every turn, as at each stage of the repairs yet more problems are uncovered. Will the team be able to overcome these obstacles to give the couple the apartment they deserve? Meanwhile Dom's investigation reveals that Stuart and Sarah are far from the only victims of this bunch of cowboys. He discovers that the company are making some misleading claims on their website and, as Dom tries to confront the builder in question, he discovers that he is a very difficult man to pin down.

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