Judge without reviewing the evidence??? I am going to offer another side of it.
That would account for 2-3 weeks of his procrastination and mismanagement of his business.
The quarantine is only extended in California as of now till April 31. How forgiving will his mortgage company be if he says "well I expected the virus would last through the year so I cancelled all my events."
Any one of us running a business has to be prepared to start as soon as the quarantine is lifted. How many mortgage payments would his 25k pay if this last 8-10 months?
Why should I pay for their mismanagement of time?
If I hire someone to paint a room. They have the all the information they need. Here is the room. Measure the square footage. If they show up and half way into the project they realize they need more paint. Why should I pay them to go to the hardware store to buy paint.
If its a custom build with lots of custom requests. Sure. But this was as basic a build as I have seen.
That is harsh especially since the OP started documenting his poor business practices long before any idea of a pandemic was evident.
Ask the countless people who lost their homes in 2009-2010 how sympathetic the judges were of their hardships when their houses were foreclosed. I haven't seen the OP paperwork but if it says the project needed to be completed by such date then that is all that matters in court.
The pandemic will only gives him the "benefit of the doubt" that he had intention to complete the work on time. The evidence would prove otherwise.
I am not saying there isn't fault both ways.
But the OP fault is minor in comparison. The micromanaging would have annoyed me and I would have returned the money and van and said good riddance. He should have documented everything via email once he believed the builder was being negligent.
My