Plastering Disaster - What to Do?

[Richard C]

8 rooms plus hall/stairs/landing, £80 per day or £600 all in, whichever was cheaper.

I made that 7 ½ days.

It took him about 10 days

So the guy does 10 days work (which is a bit more like it) & only charges you for 7 ½ ; If he was not on a mercy mission, there must be something wrong with his brain; he’s not a long lost uncle or something is he

The guy was old,

I’m old.

been doing it all his life

He’s got me there; only at it 6 years, I’m relatively new.

so the quality is very good.

Doesn’t always follow but mine is among the best your likely to see.

I think he was doing two opposite walls at a time in each room.

Standard practice (for me anyway) where the size of the room allows it on me own.

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

Cambridge is not that far from me & I think you got extremely lucky. God help if you’d picked one of the cheaper quotes, perhaps he knew who they were & took pity on you.

 

[Titsalenabumsquash]

There is obviously a north/south divide when it comes to payment. I think if you tried to charge that much up here you wouldnt get much work because they just wouldnt pay it..lol

We have decided to go down the re-skimming route and we have our old plasterer coming tomorrow to skim the worst two walls.

Thank you all for your answers, and as my dad always said horses for courses = the builder should stick to building and not plastering.

 

[delboybully]

Good luck and i hope you get a good job done this time

These things happen in life, just put it down to experience

 

[Titsalenabumsquash]

Just one question if you had to skim a 12 x 12 room and the break down is this, 1 plaster boarded ceiling, 1 x 8' wall to re-skim, 1 wall with 8' square arch so 2' on each side plus 1 foot above, 1 x 12' wall with a fire place this has already been plastered but re-skimming , 1 x 12' wall with a large sash window.

Roughly how many bags of plaster would you need?

 

[Richard C]

One 25kg bag covers 7-10 sq/m; I'll let you do the math

 

[Titsalenabumsquash]

Thank you Richard, so 39 square metres would have probably been covered by 4 bags at the least 5 bags, but not 6 bags which is what was used.

All that rippling is like the plaster is sagging, I have now spent 6 hours sanding and my partner has spent 5 hours today, the dust is awful, I look like something out of memoirs of a geisha only not as pretty and my partner looks Worzel Gummidge

 

[Richard C]

Coverage depends on the thickness. The 10sq/m relates to 2mm, most 2 coat applications will be between 3-5mm depending how flat the base is & in some cases it can be even thicker locally if the original base all over the place.

Sounds like you’ve got “tiger stripes”; it can happen but the trick is knowing what to do when it does. It can be caused by a number of reasons, to save explaining it all again, have a little read of this; //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1546362

I hope you are both wearing cartridge filter masks & not just throw away paper masks; I still reckon you would have been better off filling out with Easyfill & sanding back, it’s an awful lot easier to sand & will give you a better finish. Over sanding finish plaster exposes the grain & it will look like suede brushed the wrong way when you paint it & will need a lot more coats to cover.

Don’t forget to mist cost it first; ordinary cheap matt white emulsion thinned 25-30%, 2/3 coats in quick succession, leave to dry overnight before over coating.

 

[Titsalenabumsquash]

Hi Rich, Yes we have those tiger stripes too and now i understand why so thank you for that. I have taken about 100 pics just in case he plans on taking us to court.

Its not rippling like tiger stripes but its like lumps of plaster under the top coat if you know what i mean so that walls that were completely straight are now lumpy..its really hard to explain unless you feel it. I understand sanding down will cause a problem when painting but to be quite honest with you i would prefer to have to paint more coats and not have lumps.

I did start the mist coat but thats gone out the window. My partner is from Canada and they dont do this kind of thing over there so he is completely bewildered by it all.

Anyway back to the sanding, thank you for all your help, i have read all the stuff on here from plasterers and its gone a long way to giving me information in case this guy wants to take it further, armed with the pics i dont think he will have a leg to stand on but you never know these days.

I wont even ask why we should be wearing masks other thank my chest feels like crap but then i have just got over that swine flu, so please no more information on that cause you will scare the wits out of me.