Every season of Cowboy Builders ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best seasons 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.

Eastbourne

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.

Bath

Plymouth

Leeds

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

Warrington

Taunton

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.

Sheffield

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?

Bolton

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.

Dunstable

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.

South Gloucestershire

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.

Series 2, Episode 5

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.

Derbyshire

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.

Cardiff

Twickenham

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...

Leicester

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.

Rugby

Doncaster

Woking

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.

Dorset

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

Harrow

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.

Camberley

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.

Glasgow

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.

Lewisham

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.

Season Finale

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.

Balham

After living in their house for 17 years, a couple decide to invest in an extension for the sake of their adult sons. They thought that by hiring a female builder to undertake the work, they would get someone that they could trust. However, after spending £36,000 they were left with a devastated wreck with no electricity, water or heating.

Nottingham

Dom and Melinda take on their most heart wrenching story yet as they meet a couple who have had to deal with a string of recent tragedies, with the wife's mother and her son both passing away within a matter of months. While they were still grieving, the couple fell victim to a firm of cowboy builders.

Northwich

Dom and Melinda go to Bradford to help a couple who hoped to build an extension which would provide a bedroom to each of their children. Ayaz and Shazia spent £30,000 with a father and son building team to do the job. Instead they were left with a whole host of problems – including an extension without a roof, exposed live electrics and a number of inadequate steel beams. The parents and two daughters are forced to camp in their lounge, while their two sons are stuck sharing a freezing, damp-ridden bedroom.

It's Dominic's mission to find out how a supposedly experienced builder – with three decades of building under his belt – could have made so many basic errors. It's not long before he uncovers a string of unhappy customers, a suspicious lack of paperwork, and a wayward son whose work - and behaviour - on site is a major cause for concern.

Meanwhile, Melinda's got her hands full with the massive building project. Hampered by the problems she uncovers, Melinda appeals to the local community to help the family. She's inundated with offers – including one from the local rugby league team.

When Dom finally catches up with the builder, he finds a man in denial about both his building work and the actions of his son.

Bradford

Dom and Melinda investigate the work of a septuagenarian builder who has over half a century of experience in the building trade.

Lawrence and Helen live in Berkshire with their three children. Wanting to give their girls a bedroom each, the couple remortgaged their property in order to pay for a two-storey extension on the rear of their house. Despite having paid £38,000 of a £46,500 quote, the family were left with an unfinished shell.

Worse still, in the process of putting up the extension, the builder also managed to destablise the existing roof and carried out substandard underpinning work to the existing foundation causing cracks to appear in the rear area of the property.

Melinda and her team try to fix the myriad problems with the building work. Meanwhile, Dom gets on the case of the builder responsible and discovers that his bad building habits have been going on for years. Putting the rogue under surveillance, can Dom catch him in the act?

Langley

Simon and Diane bought a detached house in the affluent town of Guildford with a view to extending it so their adult children could live with them. The builder they hired took £54,000 of a £60,000 quote, but left much of the work incomplete. Dom decides to organise a surprise party for the rogue and invites as many of his victims as possible.

Guildford

When Neil and Davina needed an extension to their two-bedroom semi in West Sussex, and their architect recommended a local builder, they thought he would have no excuse not to show up. However, the contractor frequently failed to show. Seven months later, with £25,000 invested, the extension is still half-finished and building control found 15 faults with the work.

Melinda is more than a little upset by the situation, and everywhere she turns she uncovers more wonky workmanship. She vows to get things shipshape, and sort out the shoddy shambles.

Meanwhile, Dom starts sleuthing around, discovering that the builder has left quite a trail of destruction around the neighbourhood. When he finds out that the builder has left town, Dom pulls out all the stops to track him down.

Horsham

In south London Mel and Dom meet the Marrs, who have saved up to afford an extension to their kitchen. After paying a building company £23,000 the contractors have disappeared leaving just foundations, a floor and two walls.

While Dom tracks down the culprits, Melinda has her work cut out finding the structural steel needed to rebuild the extension.

Worcester Park

The dynamic duo are in Dorset to revisit one of the worst cases of shoddy building work either had ever seen at the time. When grandmother Karen was struck down by cancer, she needed her own quiet bedroom to recuperate. A builder the family had known for four years quoted for an attic conversion, but after four months he walked off the job.

Return to Dorset

The dynamic duo catch up with two of their favourite stories to see what has happened since. They focus on cases in Bolton and Sheffield.

Bolton and Sheffield Revisited

The property series exposing Britain's most irresponsible builders returns. Melinda Messenger meets a Wolverhampton man whose plans to provide his seriously ill wife with her dream home were ruined by an errant contractor. The tradesman in question left the home with a catalogue of expensive errors to address, and while Melinda tries to make up for the couple's disappointments, Dominic Littlewood sets out to reclaim some of the money they spent on the project

Wolverhampton

Dominic and Melinda find the hey find walls filled with toilet paper after they attempt to help a retired couple from Yorkshire who had employed a local builder to erect a large extension to their family home.

Pontefract

Solihull

Lincoln

Camberley revisited

Dom and Mel face one of their toughest challenges yet: dealing with a builder who may well offer the worst value for money in Britain. The problem is, no one knows where he is...

Christophe and Debra Montoya-Timperley have lived in their three-bedroom semi for ten years. But as their sons, Joshua and Max became older, the family had outgrown the house. So in 2008, they embarked on what they hoped would be a life-changing building project. The couple agreed to the builder's quote of £69,000. But after they had handed over £26,300 of their hard-earned cash, twelve weeks into the job the build came to standstill and the builder vanished without a trace – before he had even dug the foundations! The Montoya-Timperleys won a County Court settlement of £32,000, but they have never been able to track down the builder to get their money back.

So Dom has a particularly tricky manhunt on his hands.He has to use all his cunning to find the builder and lure him into a carefully laid trap.

Meanwhile, Melinda and her team face a huge challenge. Normally she is tasked with rectifying the mess a builder has left behind, but building an extension from the ground up is a first.

St. Albans

When Karen and Tristan Crook got married in 2011, they did not have to look far to find their first marital home. Karen's grandmother had recently passed away, leaving behind her 1920s semi. The couple decided to buy out her parents and other relatives and become the new owners of the family home.

The house needed modernisation so they planned to update the rooms, convert the loft and build a rear extension. They were sure they had found a builder they could trust, as he was an ex-boyfriend from Karen's teenage years. The builder assured them he could do the whole job for £68,000, and quickly got on with ripping everything out. Only trouble is, he did not do much putting back! Four months on, the builder had walked off site with £41,000 of their money, without having started the loft conversion or the extension and leaving their treasured family home gutted.

Melinda has a mountain to climb if she is going to get Karen and Tristan into their home – she even resorts to sending out her builder John in search of free materials. Meanwhile, Dom finds out that Karen's ex-boyfriend is a cowboy who is a master of excuses...

Dom and Melinda come to the aid of a single mum in Fleet, who has been left with a house that is not fit for human habitation.

Fleet

Dom and Mel are in Cramlington, just a few miles north of Newcastle, where they face a 'Cowboy Builders' record: a house with more problems than they have ever encountered. In 2010, Michelle and Dominic Cairns planned to start a family and an unforeseen inheritance gave them the chance to transform their home. The couple chose a builder and a few months into the job they discovered they were expecting their first baby. But the builder then walked off the site, leaving them with a list from the local council's building control department that contained 103 defects and recommendations. Mel has her work cut out tackling the problems and soon discovers another spanner in theworks. It transpires that the builder didn't block off the rainwater drain before pouring in the foundations, so the drains are now blocked with concrete. With all of her efforts diverted to sorting out this unexpected problem, Melinda has a fight on her hands if she is going to deliver the nursery, which would mean so much to the Cairns. Meanwhile, Dom is hot on the heels of the builder. He discovers that not only is he a fan of the show, but he has made some classic cowboy errors. When Dom find that he is in the process of starting up a new company, he knows that it is definitely time to act...

Cramlington

Dom and Melinda are in Milton Keynes, helping out a family who were left with nowhere to wash themselves but the kitchen sink. In 2011, Kate Snow, husband Mike and their two sons Henry, 20, and Richard, 17, wanted to adapt their three-bedroom home. Kate suffers from chronic degenerative spinal arthritis, and a ground-floor office for their home business and a disabled access wetroom were vital. They pulled together their life savings and paid a local building company £34,000 to convert their garage, existing bathroom and downstairs toilet, with some additional work to the driveway and garden. It should have been a simple six-week job... Six months later, the builder walked off with their money, leaving the family with an unfinished, uninsulated, unsafe mess. It looks like a straightforward job for Melinda and her team, until they discover that nothing is as simple as it seems. Meanwhile, Dom uncovers a trail of debts and broken promises left by the builder, stretching across the Midlands and beyond. For once it looks like the cowboy is one step ahead, as he tries to pay off his victims to stop them talking...

Milton Keynes

Single mum Rosanne lives in Bath with her son. Rosanne wanted to extend her cottage, but after paying all of the money to the builder, Rosanne was left with an unfinished shell.

Dom and Melinda head back to Harrow to visit a family they helped back in 2010 and find out whether the cowboy responsible has received his just deserts. College lecturer Rae Green had decided to extend his three-bedroom terraced house in Harrow when his elderly father Tony, a Parkinson’s sufferer, moved in. With wife Jenny and children Shamarr, Achish and Janai also in the house, the family desperately needed a loft conversion and a kitchen extension to give them the space they desired. A recommended builder quoted £34,400 for the work, so they took the plunge and remortgaged their house in order to fund the project. After two troubled months, the builder did a runner with £28,000 of the Greens' money, claiming that the taxman was shutting him down. The Greens were left in the chaos that their cowboy builder had left behind. For 84-year-old Tony, this meant sharing a cramped bunk bed with his teenage grandson. While Mel fought tooth and nail to give the family a comfortable home, Dom discovered that the builder was one of the most prolific cowboys he had ever encountered. He uncovered a string of other families who had lost their money and had heard the same excuses – but all at different times, proving that the builder's sob-story was a pack of lies. Two years on, Melinda is back to see how life has been for the Green family. Meanwhile, Dom finds out that the cowboy has been up to his old tricks. Will he get the justice he so richly deserves?

Harrow revisited

Dom and Mel are in Bradford, where a hard-working Dad has been toiling day and night to fix the mess left behind by a cowboy builder.

In 2002 Naheem and Faye Khan bought a three-bedroom bungalow. Back then they had just one child, Ava, now thirteen - but since then the Khans have added five little boys to their brood. The family decided on an extension, but the stress of all living under one roof caused Faye and the kids to move out – making getting the work done all the more important.

But having paid their builder £44,000, he walked off – leaving the Khan family with a half built wreck: without windows, doors, heating or electricity.

Melinda has a huge task on her hands to prepare for a family of eight to move back home – with thirteen rooms in need of TLC, not to mention there being no kitchen and no bathroom.

Meanwhile, Dom is on the trail of the builder who appears to have left a trail of devastation across Bradford. A pattern emerges of the cowboy giving low quotes, and then demanding more money before the job is finished. When he finally comes face to face with Dom, he makes a startling admission...

Melinda Messenger and Dominic Littlewood come to the aid of a couple from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire. John Smith used his redundancy money to pay for an extension to his family home, but after six months the builders downed tools and walked off the job - leaving it leaking, freezing and unusable.

Potters Bar

Dominic and Melinda attempt to help eEx-dancer Melissa and chef Carmine who employed a builder they knew from the local Italian community to extend their two-bedroom family flat. They ended up being left with a dangerous, unfinished, uninhabitable shell and full of rats.

Bounds Green

Dominic and Melinda are in the West Midlands to to try and help Mike and Emma who have been left with an unfinished and incorrectly built extension and a house open to the elements by a rogue builder.

Tettenhall

Dominic and Melinda are in Mitcham where Vivienne's dream of an extension so that her children, grandchildren, foster children and the elderly she cares for can all enjoy time together ended in tatters. The builder she employed told her that the work would be covered by a warranty from the National House Building Council but instead, her home has been left riddled with damp and mainly uninhabitable.

Mitcham

Dominic and Melinda return to Glasgow to check on events since they helped Natalie and Rob, a couple who lost their life savings to a cowboy builder they knew.

Glasgow Update

Dom and Mel follow up on the story of foster mum Vivienne.

Mitcham update

Melinda and Dom are in Bottisham, near Cambridge, on the trail of a cowboy who massively overcharges his customers.

Cambridge

Dom and Mel follow up with a rogue builder that featured in the first series in 2008.

The Best Seasons of Cowboy Builders

The Best Seasons of Cowboy Builders

Season 1

Season 2

Season 3

Season 4

Season 5

Season 6

Season 7

Season 8