Imagine being a contractor and being hired to work on a project while the homeowner is on vacation. In an ideal world, you’d finish the project before he arrived home.

What would you do if the homeowner was supposed to pay you for your work while he was on vacation but never sent the final payment? Would you keep working to stay on schedule or stop working until you got paid?

In this story, one grandpa and his grandson were in this situation when they were working on a project for a homeowner, and the grandpa decided that they’d keep working to stay on track. They even finished early.

But when he finally talked to the homeowner about the final payment, it didn’t go as expected.

Keep reading for all the details.

Want to go on Vaction and not pay us for the work? Wont be home for a few days after informing us? Sure.

My grandpa is on my “Do not ever mess with” list. In any way. Short list:

• Taught Shotokan overseas in Korea
• One of the highest ranked black belts outside of Japan. I have seen security footage of some of his bar fights. Its legit.
• Was a personal bodyguard during the 70’s for some Governors in our state
• Worked construction for decades: one of two Master Carpenters in my state – which leads to this story

He often worked for his grandpa.

During summers, I would work with Gramp doing a lot of his manual monkey labor: Shingles up to the roof, mix concrete, sand floors, keep everything tidy, etc.

He’d been screwed over the years as many general and subcontractors are, and as the years went by his contracts for work go more and more specific: IE payments on a certain schedule, new/unexpected cost and how they’re dealt with, etc.

One particular job started out pretty normal: He’s hired to build a new deck with a new patio/driveway patio for this guy, lets call him StupidBrain. New construction, newer house, easy job.

Gramps had even done work for him in the past, no problems.

Here are some more details about the job.

Deck is to be partly covered, 10×50 on the front of the house, 4ft up with concrete stairs. Brand new door. Brand new picture window (4×8).

Driveway is to be stained, freshly poured between the new deck and garage grandpa built a few years ago.

Guy was even going on vacation for a few weeks, we can get the job done in those 3 weeks if we bust it.

Guy pays 50% of the estimated cost up front, and was to pay the remaining 50% over the agreed time.

Here’s some context about what the payment actually paid for.

Now, this first payment covered all material for the original estimate, and paid us basically minimum wage for the hours we’d put in.

The next few installments would cover the subcontractor for pouring the driveway, and the remaining hourly wages.

Weekend 1 passed: No agreed payment.

Hmm… guys on vacation, maybe he forgot to setup auto-pay. Whatever. Send him pictures on AOL email. The original concrete stairs had been removed, new door was in place. Deck was framed out.

But we didnt hear from Stupidbrain

They kept the job on schedule despite the missing payment.

Weekend 2 passed: Darn, no pay yet but work needs to be done. Concrete guys are here for the new slab and stairs: Lets get it done so we can move onto new jobs.

Subcontractor is a long time family friend and distant relative (Call him Timmy), does us a favor and pours/stains on an IOU.

Send more pictures on AOL. No response from Stupidbrain.

They finished the work and still hadn’t gotten paid.

Week 3. We’ve finished our work two days early. Subcontractor has finished their work.

It looks amazing, up there on a nice hill.

But… we havent been paid for this work.

Gramp finally gets StupidBrain on the phone:

Let’s see how this conversation goes…

Gramp: Hey StupidBrain, hows was vacation? (blahblahblah skip forward 3-5 min: Gramps is a talker, and lived in the vacation state for a few years) Great, glad you had a great time while I was busted it here. Holy hell its been hot. What did you think of the work?

StupidBrain: “Oh it looks great! we’ll be home later day after tomorrow. We’re having a get together with XYZ”

Gramp: Well glad you’re going to enjoy it. Oh hey, seems like your bank didnt pay us on the schedule agreement.

Yikes! What’s with this guy?

Stupidbrain: “So?”

Gramp: Excuse me?

Stupidbrain: “So what? I not paying you the rest of the money. Works done. Tough luck you old jerk”

Gramp: I understand.

Click.

Grandpa wasn’t going to let him get away with that.

Gramp: Well OP, lets get to work. Oh, and get Timmy on the phone…

Stupidbrain had that large garage Gramp had built years ago, and the guy let us use to store equipment while they were out.

First, the brand new door was removed and placed in the garage. Then, each piece of the brand new deck was removed, and placed into the garage.

They kept filling the garage.

Sadly, the post were 36in deep but hey, a 4×4 truck pulled those out of the ground nice and good after a bit of shoveling. Those were also placed into the garage.

Window was also removed from the frame, and placed on top of this pile.

Deconstruction is MUCH faster than construction afterall.

They made sure everything was safely locked in the garage.

Timmy was rather unhappy as well about not getting paid, but hey… We found out that the new stairs we poured moved well enough across the new driveway/patio. And, some bleach took care of the stain we put onto the patio.

Sadly it had a few chips in it from all the ruckus, and someone made the time to take a diamond saw and cut all the way through the seams. Sadly it’ll now settle at an un-even rate.

But, all the material Stupidbrain paid for: He got to keep. We even went into the garage in the evening and made sure his front door was locked. You know, for security.

Even the few tools we needed for the job which Stupidbrain paid for, stayed in the garage

Let’s see how the homeowner reacts.

Fast forward two days: Stupidbrain comes home and throws a fit. It had stormed, and his AC had been running non-stop with the increase of draft into the front of the house.

Of course he threatens Gramps with a lawsuit and the police, which just makes Gramp laugh: A close relative was the Assistant Chief of Police in our small town, unbeknownst to Stupidbrain.

We did everything we were contractually obligated and paid to do: All the equipment, all the materials were in Stupidbrain’s possession. That is, after all, what he paid us for.

Stupidbrain blustered a lot, but it didn’t do anything at all.

And, here’s how it worked out.

Fast forward a bit. No one in the local union will deal with the guy.

Gramps and Timmy are both pretty well respected and do a lot of great work around town.

Someone from out of town ends up ‘fixing’ the issues, and does a bad job of it. Darn.

That was a lot of extra work to rip everything out, but it’s reasonable. It wouldn’t be right to let him keep something he didn’t pay for. What I love the most is that he has pictures of what it looked like when it was done, so he knows what he’s missing.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person shares their opinion.

Another person thinks the revenge was “beautiful.”

This person thinks OP’s grandpa must have a lot of good stories to tell.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a widow who returned to a store to thank employees for their kindness to her late husband.

A cement company owner would’ve handled it differently.

You can’t keep it if you didn’t pay for it. While you can’t get the time back you put into working on the job, you can make sure the person who didn’t pay doesn’t get to enjoy what you built.

I don’t blame OP’s grandpa at all for ripping everything out.