Plastering Disaster - What to Do?

[Titsalenabumsquash]

We have just had the family room end of our kitchen plastered, all the walls were rebuilt with new plasterboard and level. The room is 12' x 12' with a large square arch leading to the kitchen (it has about 2 feet on each side of the wall left. Another wall has a fire place in the middle of it, another wall has a large sash window in it and another wall has a doorway, plus the ceiling which also had new plaster board. It took the plasterer 3 days to plaster. We bought the plaster and the pva, he charged us £240.00 squids which is fair enough if the plaster had been put on correctly.

However the plaster is lumpy and bumpy, there are long trail lines in the ceiling and bits of missing plaster that are going to have to be sanded down. We spoke to the plasterer who said that all plaster needs a bit of sanding but i've just spent 40 minutes just sanding down the crappy job he has done around the window with a huge pile of dust on the window sill.

I did think getting the wall plastered would be saving me time, i could do the mist coat of emulsion and then paint. However it looks like im gonna spend at least 3 or 4 days just sanding down the bits that are missing, thats without the worry of how the paint is going to look on the lumpy wall.

I really don't know what to do i am so peed off with the workmanship but I don't know how to rectify it, if i ask him to come back and do it again im going to get another bad job...what should I do and how can i rectify this myself...any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,

 

[delboybully]

Plastering is an art form, it must take ages to learn how to do it well. I have just had my extension plastered and i couldnt believe how much work goes into plastering. I used to think plasterers just put it up and smoothed it out, job done. They have to go over the area being plastered several times to get it smooth, and each one at the right time as the plaster hardens!!!

As far as i know (not much) plaster cant really be sanded. If its done badly it either needs to be ripped out and done again or it needs re plastering over the top. Im sure the plasterers will chime in with a solution to your problem

£80 a day is cheap, mine cost me £120 a day (and that is quite reasonable)

When choosing a plasterer (or any workman) its best to go for someone who is recommended, not just the cheapest or you can end up with a bodged job that will cost more to put it right!

 

[Inky Pete]

I'm afraid that at £80 a day you get what you pay for.

At that rate even if your plasterer was booked up 5 full days a week every week he'd still only be making £20K a year gross. Take his holidays and Christmas out of that and he's down around £18K gross. With tools to buy, a van to run, liability insurance to pay for, etc. etc.

Not much for a skilled tradesman.

 

[mcluma]

NO SANDING NEEDED

if done properly

If you need to sand, - crap work

it needs to be as smooth as a mirror

 

[1john]

If you sand it you will end up with a 'grain' showing through which will look equally as bad, I would give everything a quick blast over with a mist coat and see how bad it is, this will be the only effective way of telling. If it is that bad you should get some quotes from plasterers to re-skim it. Ask for references or better still you must have a family member or friend who can reccomend someone.

 

[Richard C]

You paid a cheap price & got ---- a cowboy. Done correctly, finishing plaster never, ever needs sanding & it isn’t designed to be anyway for the reasons already mentioned; your “plasterer” hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing & is telling you a load of crap. Although I haven’t seen it, a room that size should take a very easy day for a board & skim ceiling + another day for the walls. Two days for which for a decent spread would charge you between £140-£200/day; in 2008, you could have paid anything up to £230/day for really good spreads but they will do the work in half the time.

Rather than sand it all back (finishing plaster is quiet hard), try Easyfill to fill out the problem bits. But if it's too bad, you may be better to bite the bullet & get it re-skimmed by someone who actually knows what they are doing.

 

[gregers]

i would mist coat it,then fill any defects and then sand down,then paint as needed making sure you are happy with finish.

 

[Titsalenabumsquash]

Actually he was charging us 12.50 per hour and that appears to be the going rate up here in Lincs, I know because we have used 3 different plasterers and he was the most expensive. He is also our builder, he does really good brickwork and he laid the tiles in our kitchen and did a fantastic job on both the brick work and the tile laying. He said why were we getting someone else to plaster when he could plaster. We assumed as his other work was great that he meant what he said.

I know that its different down in the south but here in Lincs the going rate seems to be 12.50 per hour. It wasnt a matter of the money if he had said it was gonna be 15 or 20 squids an hour we would have paid but that was what we had been quoted by the 2 other plasterers, its just we couldnt get either because they are busy, so we went with him.

I have sanded down 2 small walls last night and I am going to put on the mist coat today to see what happens.

 

[Titsalenabumsquash]

We werent trying to do it cheaply, we just wanted the job done quickly because we are on a tight schedule. I know its all about the finish when renovating a house, we have just spent 25 grand remodelling the kitchen and we still dont have the major appliances so no its not about the money!

 

[vv2806]

I had the same problem with a plasterer skimming one of the bedrooms. He has his own business, a one-man-company, so I assumed he should be good to be able to stay in the business. Wrong!!! I couldn't take a day off when he did the job and have no idea how many times he went over with the trowel but the result was I had sort of textured walls and ceiling In places there were ripples, like when you throw a stone in water, the only difference being they were not in circular shape but followed the movement of the trowel.

I spent 2 days sanding the plaster with an orbital sander and a detail sander in the corners. Lots of dust, horrible job. It is mistcoated now and the result is not bad.

It cost me 150 for a plasterer's day work + the 2 days I spent sanding

 

[aptsys]

Two days for which for a decent spread would charge you between £140-£200/day; in 2008, you could have paid anything up to £230/day for really good spreads but they will do the work in half the time.

Sounds expensive in 2008! I got my house in Peterborough skimmed in 2007. 8 rooms plus hall/stairs/landing, £80 per day or £600 all in, whichever was cheaper. And this guy quoted the most expensive, but was happy to work weekends which fitted in better with our plans.

 

[Titsalenabumsquash]

That is exactly what i am doing now sanding it down, its not something i had planned for. My partner and I both run businesses from home so this is just hell, we thought we were over the worst with the dust and crap and now this. We aren't about saving money on this house its 350 years old so all the walls were originally bowed and the plaster was dreadful which is why we rebuilt the walls.

On Wednesday the builder did say to my partner that he had to go back to refinish a woman's room because she wasn't happy but he said she was really picky. Why do they always say it was the woman who was being picky, are we being picky or are we just pointing out bad workmanship. In actual fact it wasn't me who noticed the problems it was my partner.

The plaster does ripple and it has loads and loads of tiny holes in it. My partner has stopped the cheque and said that he will add up all the hours its going to take me to sand the walls down and get a guy in to re-plaster the worst parts, take off how much that costs and send him a new cheque for what is left over.

 

[Richard C]

Things are quiet for some just now & prices do vary depending on area but, on average, you should expect the cost to work pout between £300 - £360 per room (1 ½ - 2days) for skimming the walls + the ceiling in an average sized room; you can double that if it needs repairs & base coat.

Before the banking crisis brought everything to a grinding halt, a top rate spread working within the M25 & immediate area would easily command £230/day; if you could find one that wasn’t booked for months in advance.

£600 for an 8 room + house is ridiculously cheap even for someone just starting out & needing the practice; it must also be very small if he managed that lot on his own in 7 ½ days! You get what you pay for & you wouldn’t get me or anyone I know near it for that price, I wonder what the quality is like? it’s either dubious or the guy is working as a registered charity; next you’ll be telling me he supplied the materials as well!

 

[aptsys]

The guy was old, been doing it all his life so the quality is very good. We have some accent lights in some rooms shining on the walls at an acute angle, so you'd easily see if the walls weren't perfect. It took him about 10 days, and I think he was doing two opposite walls at a time in each room.

Like I said, he was not the cheapest, so I guess regional prices vary a lot.

 

[delboybully]

As i said before, only ever get a plasterer (or any workman) that has been recommended to you. If possible, go and see some of his work, as this will reduce the chance of getting a bodged job.