A disgruntled painter and decorator who claims he is owed £500 for his work has taken revenge – by daubing a message on the side of a former pub he had worked on.

Dean Reeves, 50, wrote in large black letters, “Want your house painting? Don’t be like Terry, pay the bill! Now you will!”, over the cream exterior he had painted.

Mr Reeves claims builder Terry Turner paid him just £650 of the agreed £1,150 for the job, then refused to pay the rest until he had done additional work on the property.

He claims he worked through his lunch break for a week to get the job done on time on the former North Star Club in Bolsover, Derbyshire, which is being converted into flats.

However, he says Mr Turner told him he would only receive the remainder of the cash when he “gave the back of the house another coat”.

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The father-of-two says when he did what was asked, Mr Turner told him: “You’re not getting paid a penny until you’ve done the fascias.”

Mr Reeves said: “I gave him a quote for the job and he said he would ‘ping me the money straight away’.

“But he tried to change the job halfway through. The job was supposed to be done on scaffolding, he was supposed to have taken all the signs and guttering off.

“But I did the job off ladders, saving him £900 on scaffolding and I took all the signs off myself.

“He changed the job, kept asking me to extra work. He said there was a number of jobs I needed to do before I would get paid.

“I did seven days’ hard work on it. I didn’t have lunch breaks, I worked hard all week to get it done.

“He kept saying, ‘I’ll pay you tomorrow’, but tomorrow never came.

“I did the work and he said if I go back to give the back of the building another coat, he would pay me.

“I went back on Tuesday and did that, but when I sent him a picture, he just said ‘that looks better’ with a smiling face.

“I asked him where my money was and he said I wasn’t going to get a penny until I did the fascias, which we’d never agreed on.”

Mr Reeves says he took the drastic action two days after being told he was not going to get the £500 he was owed.

He added: “I went back on tea time on Thursday and did it off ladders.

“It was my first job back since Christmas, I have bills to pay and need to make money.

“It just got too much and I wanted to prove the point. I don’t regret it and I’d do it again if I had to.

“I was never going to get paid, but I wanted to make sure he had to pay something to get it cleared off.”

When contacted for comment, Mr Turner denied shortchanging Mr Reeves and said he was going to pay in full once the work had been completed.

Mr Turner said: “The bloke is a prat. He should have just done the work and he would have been paid in full. It’s standard.

“None of what he says is true. He wasn’t asked to do additional work, it was offset work by other jobs he was meant to do but didn’t.

“It was his idea, he said he would do some other jobs to offset what he wasn’t doing. He was getting paid the same to do less work.

“I wasn’t going to pay him for the whole job until he finished it, no one would.

“At the beginning he even said he’d do the work before getting paid at all, but I said no.

“Then, halfway through the job he blackmailed me and asked for all the money up front.

“I’ve spoken to police now and they will be looking to arrest him. He’s going to be done for criminal damage.

“I found out about it last night but I’m completely unbothered. It’s just paint, the idiot.

“I’m the boss, so I’m just going to go round and paint over it. Do his job for him. It’ll be done by the end of the day.

“I don’t understand why you would waste your time painting that nonsense instead of doing your job, when in that time you could have finished it.

“This is the first and last time I’m working with this man.”

A Derbyshire police spokesperson said: “We received a call this morning reporting that a property in Welbeck Road, Bolsover had had graffiti painted onto it.

“It appears to be a dispute between two parties and we will be getting in touch with those involved in due course.”