Unreasonable expectations

[kvasir]

I live in an 1890s tenement flat, with all that entails. I've just had the bathroom redone and asked for the walls to be replastered.

The guy said fine, this side (where the old tiles were) needs replastering, a skim coat will do the rest.

Ok, I said, assuming he knows what he's doing.

I assumed that I would end up with smooth-as-glass walls. Er, no. Where there were raised bits or slightly indented bits or slightly protruding bits at the edges of beading, these still exist. The raised bits I can probably best describe as saying it looks as if once upon a time someone had a bit of plaster left on their knife so they roughly scraped it off on the wall. Now I know that given the age and condition of the flat perfection isn't possible (eg I'm perfectly accepting of the slight bow to the wall where the tiles are) but should I have got better than this? Unfortunately it's only now that it's all been painted over that I've really noticed these things. Is the plasterer at fault, or should the painter have smoothed them over, or am I expecting too much?

TIA

 

[noseall]

did you pay him to make the walls perfectly smooth. was this part of his contract or did he agree to 'one coat' only?

 

[kvasir]

No; had I been so specific, I would have hauled him back! Never having had any plastering work done before that's just how I expected the finished article to look. The boss man was round yesterday and said basically, old flat - nah. Is doable, but only with a LOT of itty bitty work and a lot of plastering, which would obviously have meant more time, and more money.

Now that I know that, I'm ok with it. And it's something else I've learned for the next time!

 

[NickStone]

kvasir, you asked for the walls to be replastered and your plasterer claimed that a only a 'skim' was necessary. Now the boss is defending the poor finish on the grounds that the place is old? But isn't that why you asked for the work to be done in the first place? So, he made a judgment about what to do without explaining the disadvantages of the cheaper option. I don't think it's reasonable to blame the age of your property for the uneven finish - unless of course you told him in advance that you wanted to keep costs down.

 

[kvasir]

Yup, I think he made just that judgement - like the estimator guy that came to find out what was required didn't tell me how cr@p a plastic bath would be compared to my old cast iron one and recommend I think about a steel one maybe...

Anyhow, with the exception of one area which has been remedied, it's not that the plasterer's work was uneven as such, just that it hasn't remedied the unevenness that was already there. So it's not so much the age of my property that's being blamed, it's the condition the old lath and plaster walls were in beforehand!

 

[FredFlintstone]

When going out to price up a job and see old uneven walls I always advise the client that I can skim the walls which will improve their appearance in that it will give them a nice smooth finish but the uneveness won't be completely hidden. Yes, the effect can be reduced a little but for a perfectly flat wall it needs further work such as going back to brick.

more often than not people opt just for a re-skim.

Regards

Fred

 

[NickStone]

So it's not so much the age of my property that's being blamed, it's the condition the old lath and plaster walls were in beforehand!

Well, some people might think this all adds to the character of the place. Part of the attraction of older properties is that they don't look as if they've been built from lego . If the plastering itself is OK - and from what you've said - it sounds as though it is, I wouldn't worry too much. You can always disguise the unevenness by hanging an acrylic mirror or a picture that won't be damaged by steam. In this country, we don't seem to go in much for pictures in the bathroom but I've seen some French apartments which use pictures to great effect.