To Nancy de Booy, the little 60-year-old bungalow perched on a hillside in Tacoma, Wash., seemed ideal. With a bit of fixing up, she thought, the small home could be her own private getaway.

She found a contractor from a newspaper advertisement and hired him to renovate and expand the home by adding a second story and an outside deck.

That was a year ago.

Now, de Booy figures she’s dumped at least $145,000 into the 1,900-square-foot home, and the job’s not done. The contractor has walked off the job in a dispute.

A discouraged de Booy still is waiting for her kitchen and windows to be finished. She’s considering walking away from her dream, writing off those nine months as a painful lesson learned.

“I’m thinking of buying a little place in a mobile home park,” she said. ‘I just can’t keep pouring money into this place. Everywhere I look, it just hurts. I’m getting too old for this.”

Broken promises

She blames the nightmare on a contractor who promised a complete renovation, including adding a second story, for $120,000. Halfway through the job, he said he would need $40,000 more than the agreed-upon price. De Booy refused to pay it, and he stopped work.

She filed complaints with the state, but she’ll probably have to take the contractor to court, she said.

Experts in contracting disputes and fraud cases say that de Booy’s experience is similar to other complaints they hear regularly about home construction projects.

The first thing consumers should do is check to see whether a contractor is registered with the state and has posted the required bonds, said Sean Beary, a contract complaint expert with the Washington attorney general’s office.

After that, Beary and other experts keep repeating one word: references.

Not only should consumers get references and call them, they should make sure the work done for the references is similar in scale to the proposed job on their own home.

Erin May of the Better Business Bureau of Oregon and Washington pointed to other key areas for consumers to consider when dealing with contractors.

Multiple bids

Homeowners often don’t get more than one bid, she said. Multiple bids help put the job in perspective in terms of time and cost.

Both May and Beary emphasized that consumers should stop paying the contractor if they aren’t satisfied. Too many keep handing out money.

“It gets to be a question of when do you cut your losses,” Beary said. “I know that is a difficult decision to make, and I understand their dilemma.”

Dennis Yonker, a specialist with Washington state’s contractor registration program, said that the initial contract should be as detailed as possible. “That should alleviate a whole lot of headaches,” he said.

He said consumers are not under any obligation to keep writing checks. “The consumer needs to understand that the more money they give the contractor, the less leverage they have,” Yonker said.

In fact, before the job begins, the consumer may want to ask the contractor for a list of suppliers and subcontractors. “Ask to see if they’ve been paid on time by the general contractor,” Yonker said. “Knowledge is power in dealing with the construction world.”

No money up front

Peter Lawrence of the state’s contract compliance office said that a homeowner shouldn’t have to pay any money at all before the job is at least under way.

“Consumers think they have to pay money up front,” he said. “But they don’t. They just need to shop around and find a contractor who has a credit line with suppliers.”

Lawrence advised holding 10 percent of the final payment until after the job is completed, until the contractor presents the homeowner with a “release of lien” statement from suppliers.

This essentially is an assurance by subcontractors and suppliers that they’ve been paid by the contractor, Lawrence said. Otherwise, the homeowner has to pay.

He also suggests that consumers, when considering a big project, ask the contractor to take out a performance bond equal to the amount of the job.

“If they are going to do a $60,000 kitchen remodel, the bond they are required to have is not going to be enough to even cover the costs if the job goes south,” he said.