DENVER -- A Denver woman, who paid $2,200 up front to have her windows replaced, said she wants other homeowners to know what she went through.
Edwina (Nina) Kavanaugh, 73, said she believes she's been scammed, but the man she hired to replace the windows in her home, at 611 Lowell Boulevard, which has been in her family for five generations, said he had legitimate reasons for not doing the job.
Sentimental home was built in 1905
“This house is very special to me,” Kavanaugh said, “because it has been in my family since my Great Grandmother was alive.”
Kavanaugh told Denver7 that the house passed down to her Grandmother, then to her Mother and Great Aunt and finally to her.
“I bought it from my stepfather,” she said. “I’ve had it for 40 years.”
Kavanaugh said her children want her to sell it, so she’s planning to replace the windows.
"I've been saving money for ten years," she said. “I want wavy glass, just like it had when it was built.”
When asked, "What's wavy glass?" she pointed to a couple of divits in an original pane.
“Right here,” she said, here’s kind of a dent in the window, and as you can see, it’s wavy glass.”
Looking for a contractor
Kavanaugh said she used Home Advisor to find a contractor and hired John Cunningham with Maximum Impact Glazing & Construction.
“He said the entire job would cost $5,000,” she said. “He then asked for $2,200 to buy the glass and supplies. That was in March.”
She said she gave him a certified check and then waited, and waited, and waited.
“He’d call and say he was coming to do the work and then he wouldn’t show up,” she said. “Then he would call the next day and would say he’d make it another day. He just kept doing that for six months.
Contractor had “situations”
Cunningham told Denver7 that he didn’t do the work because he “couldn’t get it in the schedule.”
“I had situations that came up,” he said. “I was very vocal with her on that.”
He maintains that he didn’t take advantage of her.
When asked specifically why he didn’t do the job, Cunningham replied, “I was in Seattle with my mom, who was dying for three months, and she (Kavanaugh) knows that.”
Kavanaugh said she heard several different stories.
“First, he said someone had stolen everything out of his truck,” she told Denver7. “Then he said that his mother was sick in the hospital and he couldn’t come and do the work. Then he said, when he came back from Washington, that he had to fire everyone on his crew, because they had taken things from his truck. I mean it was just one thing after another.”
Kavanaugh asks for money back
Kavanaugh said she’d had enough and finally asked for her money back.
“I finally decided that he was just lying to me,” she said.
She said she asked for a certified check, just like the one she gave him, but he told her he couldn’t do that but would instead give her two post-dated checks.
Kavanaugh said one of the checks, for $1,100, was post-dated October 11. The other, also for $1,100, was post-dated for November 11.
Both checks arrived with a note that said, “To Nina, sorry.”
Kavanaugh said she can’t help but wonder if the checks are going to “bounce.”
“I thought (the post-dated checks) were terrible,” she said, “considering how long he kept my money.”
Cunningham assured Denver7 that the checks won’t bounce.
He also claims that he still has to pay for the special glass that he ordered for Kavanaugh, even though he's giving her her money back.
Kavanaugh said she's trying to figure out what to do next, if the checks do bounce.
“I just hope he never does this to anyone else,” she said.
