Contractor Woes

Have you ever hired a contractor only to experience that they:
1) Don't meet the deadline
2) Don't buy the supplies
3) Spend all your cash way ahead of time
4) Don't pay the people they employ
Well - that's our experience with trying to remodel our first floor bathroom (and paint the kitchen).
The contractor who built our really cool 3-window dormer did a great job and was on-time and on budget. Not the case for remodeling our small 1st floor bathroom. He's apparently dealing with an ill elderly mother, who needs 24 hour care and can't get it, so it's fallen on his family. However, he hasn't responded to many calls until last Monday, when Tom got ahold of him and fired him from the job. Why? Because his sub-contractor (the only 1 working) were:
1) Told by the contractor not to come back
2) Not paid for 10 days work.
The subcontractor came to us last weekend and said his attorney instructed him to place a mechanic's lien on our house (you can do that in this state) - where someone does work in your house, and the contractor that hires them doesn't pay them (even though we paid the contractor).
How fair is that to the homeowner? Well, it's not, but when the contractor (who has our cash) won't pay his worker, and won't answer his phone, we have no choice but to double pay.
So, we've fired the contractor, hired the subcontractor, and are paying almost double for the small bathroom...all to replace the tub with a shower and tile the bathroom. All the new fixtures that the contractor was also paid to buy, he didn't - so we had to buy those, too. We've also been buying the building supplies, paint, etc. for the subcontractor.
It was promised for completion by Dec. 18, when our friend Darold moved in (from Florida). He accepted a job in DC, and is moving into his own place next month -meanwhile all three of us share our guest bathroom.
The bottom line: this little bathroom is months behind in completion and it has been an expensive nightmare.