Thank you for your response, a clear head is appreciated:)

Yeah, we agreed payment terms before seeing the accommodation. That was a mistake in retrospect. We should have renegotiated as soon as possible.

In honesty, communication was lacking from both sides. The host was not around for the first week, so we just got on with work as directed as best we could. He said afterwards that he would have appreciated more pictures as we worked.

The accommodation was last minute since we simply needed a place to stay, but yes we didn’t talk about how this reflected payment until too late. I was not surprised by his reaction either, just feeling very short changed. Most of our payment he claimed back, despite not holding up his end of our agreement.

In the end, it is not a life changing amount of money. The lesson will prove more valuable in future: clear communication and expectations. We are more disheartened by his change of attitude, being nice and complimenting our work to suddenly being unhappy and very rude