Never pay upfront

I contracted this company to do a kitchen renovation on 18 March 2019. After he received the 60% deposit on March 23rd, the work which was supposed to start immediately, only began in the first week of May. I was out of the country and returned on May 10 to find that the contractor could not account for the deposit. To protect my investment I decided to advance more money to get the kitchen done. He took 3 more months to do it, working on other projects simultaneously. Unfortunately for me I found out later that he tried to cut costs as much as possible, compromising the workmanship and finishes. The floor tiles are not fixed properly, the gas cooker was not properly installed, some of the electric wiring was faulty and he failed to clear the rubble or clean up the mess he had left. I had to contract other service providers to fix what they could and to clean up. Unfortunately the tiles I can do nothing about unless I redo the kitchen floor. It is a very disappointing result for a long-awaited kitchen makeover. If ever you contract this or any other company, DO NOT PAY UPFRONT. I found out (too late) from the experience of others that this is not unusual behavior for this contractor. My advice is, if the contractor will not work without a large deposit, find another one who will. In fact, insist on buying the materials yourself, double check everything they do and every piece of material they install to ensure that they are new items.