BATON ROUGE - A contractor tells 2 On Your Side that all he did was follow his client's wishes, but that client says she's living a nightmare.

Monica Duprey says the contractor she hired in 2023 to perform demo work and add an addition onto an existing property has destroyed it to the point that she might have to start from scratch. The house on Fairfields Avenue has been sitting untouched since November 2024.

"When Gregory Carter saw this property, he sold me a vision; he sold me a dream," Duprey said. 

Five months into the project, Duprey says red flags started to fly. She says that Carter would go several weeks without work and would miss deadlines. Duprey says her mortgage company has reimbursed Carter for $58,000 worth of work. 

Duprey hired a private inspection company to give a detailed report of the project and it noted several pages of defects. The city performed a courtesy inspection at Duprey's request and it failed. The report says the home needs to have an engineered beam installed to give proper bearing for the CMU block walls. The exterior walls are lacking a moisture barrier, stairs leading to the second floor have uneven treads, the roof bracing is missing on the second floor, and wooden form boards for the foundation were left in place and remain under constructed exterior walls. 

"The chief inspector and deputy inspector both said, 'Ma'am, this all has to come down,'" Duprey said. 

The original form of the house is a two-story CMU block structure. Some of those blocks are cracking, falling, and breaking without proper bearing.

"It's not a matter of it that's going to come down, it's when it's going to come down," she said.

Duprey fears that the plumbing wasn't laid correctly before the foundation was poured, which is uneven. 

The contractor tells 2 On Your Side he did everything to please his client, including changing out the windows to meet their vision. Carter refutes several of Duprey's claims and says plumbing was in place before the foundation was poured. 

Duprey says she hired Carter in August 2023. According to the Louisiana State Board of Contractors, Carter wasn't licensed until December 2023. The board notes it has received a couple of complaints about Carter's Construction #1 LLC.

Duprey is looking into hiring an attorney.