Troubles with renovations

Our house is undergoing renovations in the basement, and from recommendations from a few friends, we hired a person to do it. The initial discussions went pretty well, so we signed a contract. The first week went ok, everything was on-schedule, but soon we noticed something really wrong. He started using extremely low-quality material in order to save money on his part, so low-quality that it's practically dangerous, such as a plastic tube for underground water pipes, and drilling the wrong hole size for installing the kitchen range hood (apparently smaller hole size is cheaper, even if it means the range hood cannot be installed >.>). He also fired the worker who informed us of the low quality stuff he was using. So now instead of three workers (he worked as one in the beginning, but after first week stopped showing up), we have one worker everyday in our basement working at an abysmal rate. This is not all, not only is he extremely cheap and greedy, a majority of the things he says are lies, for example, lying that the fired worker does not have a certificate for that tool trade, lying that he promises to show up to work the next day, and lying about the conditions of the renovations (saying there are no leaks when it's so obvious there are).
We just realized that he did not put his business name on the business card (so he can deny any responsibilities), and since we signed the contract (first timers, so we didn't put detailed conditions on the contract), there's no going back. I was just wondering, is this part of some scam he's doing? Because the slow pace and barely-legal things that he's working is not justified at all, it's as if he's lengthening the process on purpose, which does not save him any money at all, as the worker needs to be paid by the hour.


Read the full thread at RenovateForum.com...