Dear PoPville – Can I pursue legal action against the house flipper?

Photo by PoPville flickr user pablo.raw

Dear PoPville,

My husband and I bought our row house in the H Street area almost one year ago. The house had been renovated / flipped back in 2001.

We decided to update the kitchen now, so we purchased our cabinets and materials and hired a contractor. To save some money, we took out the existing cabinets ourselves. As you can imagine, the kitchen is a mess. Not only do we have mold damage on the drywall, pretty much all of the wiring/electrical is not up to code. The stove was hard-wired into the wall, the cabinets were hung with drywall hooks (not in the studs), there were “man-made” extension cords, and the washing machine was somehow rigged to plug into a 3- prong outlet that shouldn’t have been. In addition, the contractor found termite damage under one of the cabinets (we had a termite inspection, but my understanding is that hidden areas aren’t covered).

My question is, as a homeowner, do I have any recourse to the contractor/company who renovated the house back in 2001? Most of what they put in was not allowed per code, and now I’m paying my contractor to tear out all of the drywall to fix everything. Has anyone dealt with a situation like this? Did you pursue legal action against the flipper?