Short answer. No. Normally a contractor who furnished the materials bears the loss if the finished work is destroyed before delivery. But Article 1717 of the Civil Code makes an exception: if you delayed in receiving the work, the loss shifts to you, and the contractor is no longer the one who suffers it.
What the law says
If the contractor bound himself to furnish the material, he shall suffer the loss if the work should be destroyed before its delivery, save when there has been delay in receiving it.
Civil Code, Article 1717 — Loss Where Contractor Furnished Materials. Read the full provision →
The general rule on loss before delivery
When you hire a contractor to make something and the contractor supplies the materials, the finished work is at the contractor's risk until it is delivered. Article 1717 of the Civil Code states it plainly: If the contractor bound himself to furnish the material, he shall suffer the loss if the work should be destroyed before its delivery. So if a completed piece is destroyed by fire or accident before it is handed over to you, the contractor normally absorbs that loss, having provided both the labor and the materials. He cannot demand payment for work that never reached you, and he must bear the cost of what was lost.
The exception when you delay
That rule has a crucial limit, and it answers your question. The same article ends with the words save when there has been delay in receiving it. "Save" means "except." So if the work was ready and you, without justification, delayed in receiving or accepting it, the exception applies and the loss no longer falls on the contractor. In that situation the risk has shifted to you, the person who should have taken delivery. If the finished work is then destroyed while your unjustified delay continues, you, not the contractor, bear the loss, and you may still owe what was agreed for the work.
Why delay shifts the risk
The exception reflects a basic fairness principle in the law of obligations. A contractor who has finished the work and stands ready to deliver has done his part. If the other party wrongly refuses or fails to accept delivery, that party falls into what the law calls delay, and it is not fair to keep the risk of loss on the contractor who was ready to be rid of it. By putting the risk on the one who caused the holdup, the law discourages a customer from stalling and protects a contractor who is being kept waiting. The party in delay effectively takes on the danger of an accident he could have avoided by accepting on time.
The limits of this rule
Two limits are worth noting. First, Article 1717 speaks to the case where the contractor bound himself to furnish the material; where the customer supplied the materials, a different allocation of loss can apply. Second, the exception depends on there genuinely being a delay in receiving, meaning your failure to accept must be unjustified. If your refusal to accept was proper, for instance because the work was defective or not what was agreed, you are not in delay and the risk does not shift to you. So the loss falls on the customer only when the work was deliverable and the delay in accepting it was truly on the customer.