House not finished way past estimated due date

What is the name of your state? Louisiana

We are using a contractor to have a house built in Ponchatoula, Louisiana. We signed the loan agreement and building contract in May 2005. The estimated completion time was 160 days. To this day, the house is still not completed. The plumbing fixtures, flooring, driveway, some cabinetry and other touch up stuff is left to finish the house. First off, the hurricane that hit did not affect or house or the area in which it is being built besides a pwer outage for maybe a week. Actually, only the outer walls were up at the time of the hurricane that's IT.

Our contractor has given us numerous excuses to the snails pace at which our house has been built. He did say an addition to the plan that we made would be free which is about 10k dollars. We have been paying 2 mortgage notes since May 2005, one on the house we presently live in and the construction loan. We are being financial drained from this, and my wife is on the verge of killing me because he will not return her phone calls!

Is there any legal action we can take to make him finish the house in a specified time period? We asked him a couple of months ago to sign something anything saying when the house would be completed and he said no to that. At that time, he told us it would be 45 days, but he would not put it in writing. It's been about 5 or 6 months since then.

Thanks you for any help you can provide.

Joel Harris

This is harsh but it is so other will not make your mistakes!

If you had only spent about 500 more dollars on an Atty to go over your contract with you he/she would have more than made up for that cost by now. Would have protectd you with dollar amounts per day past the due date of completion that the contractor would have to pay you, barring things past his control/

Now go to an Atty and put a fire under this persons behind. You have gone far past the tolerance I would have shown in this situation!

Thanks

TY POJO what we thought.