New plaster in house rennovation

[dzg7pl]

Hi,

My partner and I bought a house (it is about a century old) at auction earlier in the year and got someone in to replaster the entire house based on the reccommendation of a friend.

It still had what looked to be the original plaster on the walls, which the plasterer skimmed over. He also skimmed the ceilings in the top rooms and boarded and skimmed the celings in the lower rooms.

Since the job was done, cracks have been appearing all over the shop. Tapping the plaster reveals a hollow sound where the cracks are, which is to be expected on plaster as old as the stuff under the skim.

I have a few questions regarding this...
1) Should he have ever attempted to skim over the existing plaster?
2) Being reluctant to chop all the plaster off back to the brick and start again, would lining paper be an adequate remedy?
3) With the boarded ceilings cracking (which we assured "they'll never crack"), does this point to a **** job?
4) We are going to try and get him to come back and remedy this (at no or little cost), but if he refuses, would we have grouns to take him to small claims court?

Cheers

Tim

 

[stevethespreader]

Hi,

My partner and I bought a house (it is about a century old) at auction earlier in the year and got someone in to replaster the entire house based on the reccommendation of a friend.

It still had what looked to be the original plaster on the walls, which the plasterer skimmed over. He also skimmed the ceilings in the top rooms and boarded and skimmed the celings in the lower rooms.

Since the job was done, cracks have been appearing all over the shop. Tapping the plaster reveals a hollow sound where the cracks are, which is to be expected on plaster as old as the stuff under the skim.

I have a few questions regarding this...
1) Should he have ever attempted to skim over the existing plaster?
2) Being reluctant to chop all the plaster off back to the brick and start again, would lining paper be an adequate remedy?
3) With the boarded ceilings cracking (which we assured "they'll never crack"), does this point to a **** job?
4) We are going to try and get him to come back and remedy this (at no or little cost), but if he refuses, would we have grouns to take him to small claims court?

Cheers

Tim

1 a proper assesment should have been taken out to see if the old plaster was fit enough to skim over, on a reskim job a lot of spreads will skim over anything if there asked to, either he has skimmed over blown plaster or the new skim is cracking because of lack of prep
2 chopping it all off will be the best option, i wouldent mention lining paper on this forum again, papering over the cracks is not somthing anyone on here would advise
3, you cant garentee that a ceiling will never crack , one mans ceiling is another mans floor,
4, it sounds like that there is a lot of work for this spread to come back to because the proper remedy is to take it all off and he may be reluctent to do it, as for the small claims court i cant see you winning you but its your choice, i havent heard of a spread being taken to court yet maybe some of the others have

 

[dzg7pl]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your reply - much appreciated.

1 a proper assesment should have been taken out to see if the old plaster was fit enough to skim over, on a reskim job a lot of spreads will skim over anything if there asked to, either he has skimmed over blown plaster or the new skim is cracking because of lack of prep

What he said to me was that he would chop out any bad bits, filling with bonding coat and then skim over. I am no plasterer, so I assumed this would be ok. However, it seems he didn't do the proper prep...

2 chopping it all off will be the best option, i wouldent mention lining paper on this forum again, papering over the cracks is not somthing anyone on here would advise

Unfortunately, that requires money we don't have as we have already paid him.

3, you cant garentee that a ceiling will never crack , one mans ceiling is another mans floor,

No, I realise this, but for a boarded ceiling to crack so soon after being done (the house has been empty since the job was done and so the floor/ceiling has had minimal traffic). It has definitely cracked along the joint of the two boards.

4, it sounds like that there is a lot of work for this spread to come back to because the proper remedy is to take it all off and he may be reluctent to do it, as for the small claims court i cant see you winning you but its your choice, i havent heard of a spread being taken to court yet maybe some of the others have

Yes, there is and I can see this getting nasty. Surely we have a case though, given we took his advice (stupidly assuming he knew what he was on about and would do a good job - wasn't the cheapest quote we had either!) and as far as I can see, he has done a really poor job. Why do you think we wouldn't be successful in court?

Thanks again.

Tim

 

[stevethespreader]

Why do you think we wouldn't be successful in court?
Tim

it will be your job to prove he done a bad job, i think the odds will be with him, all he has to say is things like what i said another mans floor is another mans ceiling, or there have been movement in the house that has caused the cracks, somebody could have knocked it ect ect, you may have had the heating on ect ect, just as im typing this i can hear my kids slamming the door upstairs, which may cause another crack in my wall lol the list goes on, i think its going to be very hard to prove espec when you have paid him.