Plasterers have ruined engineered wood floors

[Fannypop]

Help, I need to know my rights here.

we’ve just had an extension built and knocked through. The plasterers have been in today and the existing floor is absolutely caked in plaster dust and dried on globs of plaster, plus there’s plaster dust all throughout the ground floor of the house. No attempt at all has been made to protect the floor, not a dust sheet in sight.

Reading online it sounds like it’s pretty impossible to get the dust out of wood floors although I’ll be over the moon if someone tells me otherwise.

We had planned to just extend the existing floor into the extension and I bought the new flooring for the new bit at the weekend. If I have to replace the whole area it’s going to cost £7k+

Where do I stand legally here? If it doesn’t clean up are the company liable?

Did you ask if they have proper insurance?

Who engaged them - your builder or you?

They do, they’ve been hired via my builder whos
project managing but he checked.

Speak to the company that laid the flooring for their suggestions on repair. I think engineered wood can be sanded. It must be possible in some capacity as my wooden floor was sanded before it was sealed. I digress.... speak to your flooring company and then start the profess to get the plasterers to pay for remediation.

So why didn’t he check that they had covered the floors correctly? When we replastered one room, the whole house seemed to be shrouded in plastic.

I think you have a claim against your builder if he is the project manager.

Ah, I'd let your builder sort it out. It should be returned to the same condition it was in, otherwise it should be re-finished. Don't do any cleaning yourself or this could make it worse (water stains etc)

You can clean it, although it's a bloody nightmare.

Were you project managing the job yourself? Floor protection is a basic requirement of any job like that, but a lot of workmen are lazy arses who will do the very bare minimum (or nothing at all) when it comes to creating mess.

Having learned this the hard way, I make sure to put down heavy-duty floor protection myself before letting any trades in, or make sure I specify to the tradesperson that the floor has to be properly protected.

Last time I had a nightmare plasterer bastard ruin a wooden floor I had to go over it a million times with a henry hoover (getting through dozens of HEPA filter bags), then washing it with a mild solution of wood floor cleaner, then refinishing the boards.

Talk to your builders and tell them how unhappy you are.

Same happened in my mum's main bedroom. Victorian house with extra features, took 3 weeks to get rid of the mess. Original floorboards not covered. I just wanted them out as the plaster water cascaded down the stairs when one on the dropped the large bucket down the stairs.

Also - I agree with previous posters that if there was a project manager / building company involved then they should remedy any damage to the floor and get it back to the original condition.

Thanks all, I’ve messaged the builder who has immediately said do not pay them and he’s calling them right now.

This is our first project, the builder has been brilliant throughout but feels like he’s been let down by these guys.

Your contract is with the builder who is project managing- if he commissioned unprofessional idiot cowboys who did £7k of damage then it's him you sue if it's not rectified. Presumably you haven't paid him for the work yet so can establish how it can be rectified and tell him he can either arrange for rectification himself at no cost to you or you'll deduct the cost from his final invoice. (Either way he can then sue the plasterers himself as it's their ultimate responsibility, but you can't sue them as you have no contract with them)

I had a similar issue. Our problem was the decorator sanding sound plaster before painting, with the dust falling directly onto our engineered wood floors. I questioned and he assured me he would be able to just sweep up the dust; my dim-witted DP agreed and both conspired to make me feel like an uptight nag.

It later transpired that I was right. The floors are not varnished but oiled, and the dust soaked up the oil, making the floors look blotchy, cloudy and dirty. When I could finally get them to admit I was right (it look three separate men cleaning the floor in an effort to prove that I just hadn't done it properly, before they accepted it), we fixed it by re-oiling. Good as new.

You can clean it, but they messed up, so let them sort it out. Plastering is very messy work.

I am completely lost for words at plasterers not putting down floor protection first! We've just had builders in for 11 months doing all sorts and every single one of them has put down some sort of protection on the floor first.

As PPs say leave it to your builder, apart from anything else if he's got a good reputation and they want to do more work for him it's in their interest to sort this out.

You don’t need to replace them, just sand and refinish. I agree it shouldn’t have happened, but replacement not necessary.

Thanks all, the builder has contacted the plasterer who has assured him (and therefore me) they have half a day planned tomorrow to clean everything and will leave it as they found it. We won’t know they were there apparently

Pah.

Any scrubbing of finished floors will leave marks everywhere. Idiots.