Vet's stalled bathroom remodeling project finally sees progress

SPRING, TX (KTRK) -- For the first time in three years, a Vietnam veteran from Spring finally sees progress in his fight to get answers from the VA.

On this Memorial Day, Frank Haynie offers a pretty honest assessment of his health.

"I, like everyone else, am dying. Some of us just get there quicker," he said.

Haynie fought in Vietnam but came home poisoned and disabled by Agent Orange. As Vietnam gets further away, the Agent Orange effects have gotten worse.

"I'm getting around less well and I need this thing finished," Haynie said.

This thing is his bathroom. And when we first met him, he couldn't use it.

The shower was too small, too close to the toilet that was also tough to use and the tub. It's not that big a deal until you realize it was three years after the VA spent $60,000 of your dollars to rehab Haynie's home to make it handicap accessible.

This is what progress looks like: A remodel re-do for a disabled veteran that didn't get approved until we started demanding answers from the VA. He shouldn't have needed us. The first plans weren't followed, flaws in the first job were glaring. But all approved by VA inspectors.

"We found the mold, we found misconstruction. When we broke into the bench, there was 4 inches of water," Jim Darst said.

Darst is the new contractor fixing the work with a new check from the VA. He jumped at the chance to do it after hearing what Haynie was going through.

"If they did their jobs over there the way this was done, we'd be a Third World county right now," Darst said.

Haynie knows the VA is facing far bigger struggles than this, especially now with the wait time scandal exploding. But he can't help but wonder if that and his problems are symptoms of the same dysfunction.

He couldn't get his redo approved until the VA secretary himself signed off on it.

"I believe he does care. He's a war hero, but he either can't manage or the system is so big or so broken he doesn't have the ability to do what needs to be done," Haynie said.

His project should be complete in another month. Nearly three and a half years after he first started asking the VA to fix its mistakes.