MEMPHIS, Tenn. — When the Problem Solvers first met Yvette Booker, she explained her deep frustration with the unfinished work on her driveway.
“Once it starts raining, it looks like white stains all over my driveway when it rains,” she said in August. “Every time I drive up, I want to cry because this is terrible.”
She said a man named Timothy Johnson abandoned the work. She had paid him $600 under the name of his company Grit n Grind Construction.
“I really want my money back from him,” she said. “He didn’t do us right, along with seven other neighbors in this subdivision.”
When the WREG Problem Solvers caught up with Johnson, he said still planned to return to do the Bookers’ work.
“They told me to come back and complete the job between now and the weekend,” he had said.
At the time, the Problem Solvers questioned his timing.
“Were you going to go back and fix it before Channel 3 got involved?” we asked. “It just seems strange timing we started looking into it last week and now this week you’re saying you’re going to fix it when they’ve tried to get you to fix it for a long time.”
“I thought that was already on the plans for me to get it taken care of,” Johnson said.
Problem Solvers: Driveway stain project gone bad
But he never went back. In fact, once the original Problem Solvers story aired, the Bookers heard from someone close to him.
“My husband got a call from his dad and he was like, ‘Man, my son didn’t come back and take care of your business, I don’t know what to say about him,’” Yvette Booker said.
Instead, the Problem Solvers stepped in to solve this problem another way.
“The call we got was, ‘Hey, we have another heroes project,’” said Allen Williams, a district manager with Lowe’s. “We’re excited and happy to help Mr. and Mrs. Booker with their driveway project.”
Williams sent teams to replace the bad work and explained why Johnson should’ve used a sealant, rather than regular paint.
“What was applied to the driveway is not appropriate for the application so we’re having to take that up and prep it for what should go down,” he said.
It took nearly a month for Lowe’s contractors to wash away Johnson’s paint and replace it with a shiny new sealant and pristine white tile on the doorstep.
“They always ask, ‘Do y’all like it? Do we need to do anything else?’” Booker said of the Lowe’s team. “Look how happy I am. Look how happy my husband is. He enjoys just sitting out looking at the driveway!”
She said her biggest lesson for others would be to investigate before hiring someone to do work for you; check the Better Business Bureau and state licensing boards and only go with someone whose license you can verify.
