To ask if this quote for plastering sounds reasonable?

[CandleWithHair]

Friend of the family doing the work, for ‘mates rates’. I’m having a bedroom replastered inc ceiling (c. 4m x 4m), entire upstairs landing inc ceiling and wall alongside staircase (double height), and downstairs hall ceiling (approx 8m long).
He’s also going to strip the walls of current wallpaper before he does the plastering, and paint all the walls/ceilings afterwards.

He’s quoted me £1800 and has estimated it’ll take him c. 2 weeks. I have zero clue about this stuff and the internet is far from clear on the answer!

I suppose I’m only asking as for some reason I thought it’d be less expensive than that, but then it IS a lot of work!

Sounds about right.

WE paid that for an entire terrace house,
One bedroom cost us £300 and took one day

With painting that is a very good rate!

We paid £600 just for plastering the hall, stairs and landing. That needed no wall prep and I painted it myself after.

but not including wallpaper strip or painting after.

We paid 3.5k for replastering walls and ceiling in one bedroom, ceiling in hall, ceiling in sitting room including replacing small piece of missing cornice and cupboard, plus repainting. We stripped the paper off ourselves. So that sounds good to me.

That's not too bad - I'm a painter & decorator and plasterers I know charge around £800 a day. If he says it'll take two weeks it sounds like he's skimming the walls rather than a full on bonding plaster and skim coat job. He one thing I would be concerned about is the skim fully drying out (now the temp has dropped, dry time will be longer) before its mist coated and then painted.

You could always get a few others round to quote to put your mind at ease.

a lot of plasterers unions then skim over wallpaper as stripping it is a horrible job DH was in construction :-)

Dh (who is a builder/master plasterer) says that is very cheap if he is a good craftsman, ie have you seen examples of his work?
DH has had to "put right" many jobs that have been done by a clients "friend", down to using completely the wrong materials to a finish that looked like a knife and fork had been used instead of a float!

Ok sounds like I just have very hopeful ideas about pricing! Thanks all.

@woobeedoo he’s told me the ceilings will be bonded. No idea about walls! The two week estimate is for the prep and plastering, he’ll come back later to paint - he’s already told me I can’t have the heating on too much while it’s drying

How many actual days of work, as opposed to gap days for drying time? Are you supplying materials or is he? Is he disposing of old wallpaper and doing a clean?

@hazelbite I’ve seen his own home and that of a mutual friend that he did recently. He seems to be a bit of a perfectionist!

unibond not unions no edit function

We had living room, dining room, morning room, hallway, stairwell, landing and three bedrooms done, walls and ceilings (old house high ceilings, large rooms), we did ask the stripping ourselves and the painting we did with help from a friend (p&d), the plastering alone cost about the and a half thousand and that was my cousin's husband. So it seems reasonable, given he's doing all the prep and painting too!

*Three and a half thousand

If he's stripping the paper then the walls are being skimmed or he'd just take a hammer & chisel to them as they are. You can always buy a steamer for £30 and steam the paper off yourself to save a bit of cash. Plastering doesn't take too long but the prep work does so that's what's taking up the majority of his time and yes, too much heat and the plaster will dry too quickly and crack. Time to stock up on blankets and thick socks!

£800 a day?! Potentially £200k a year?? I’m in the wrong job.

Sounds like an absolute steal to me! Painting is £300 a room here for context.

How much were you expecting to pay?!

I really hate this mates rates stuff. Imagine if someone asked you to do your job for 2 weeks but only get paid 2/3 of what you usually do. Would you do it??

Depends where it is but that seems pretty good to me.

I just paid £3800 for 8 ceilings plus adding coving. Took 14 days. A lot of the rooms were in a bad state and one whole ceiling was about to come down.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me , is that including the materials and paint ? , if so it's a bargain as 3 coats of paint is a lot of paint and time consuming ,

fatty I genuinely didn’t have a clue - I think it was more a naive hope that the job would only take a few days and therefore not cost very much.

I’m not going to get into the mates rates topic suffice to say I’ve done him a good turn in the past, so I don’t see a problem in it. I didn’t ask for a discount. I mainly wanted to us him as I know and trust him!

Sounds cheap to me.

Are you buying the paint and plaster?

Yep, that sounds really good, I'd jump at it. We've spent (sporadically) the last year stripping the big bedroom and hallway wallpaper and getting the walls replastered as needed, and we paid more for just the plastering.

The low/no heating thing is important for the thick layer(s) of plaster to set right, so get jumpers on!