Estimate for repainting/replastering a hallway and stairs?

[Londonwriter]

We've had a quote of £20,000 labour-only to renovate a hallway and stairwell.

The house is a three-storey 1880s Victorian terrace in south London. We've been living here since May last year. It's not a wreck, but it is tatty in places, especially the stairwell, which has bumpy, shiny magnolia walls, an unpleasant murky-green carpet, and doors that don't fit properly.

The decorator subcontracts the carpentry, etc to a team of people. We got a recommendation to use him from my parents-in-law, as he'd done work on their house and others in their street. He did some work last year repainting, retiling and renovating our conservatory, which was falling down, painting our back room and restoring some sash windows.

When we queried why it was so expensive, he said it was because I wanted to keep the original Victorian door frames rather than throwing them in a skip, wanted to repair the doors (again, rather than skipping them and buying new ones), the bannisters needed the paint stripping, which is a time-consuming job, and hanging patterned wallpaper in a stairwell would cost thousands.

He couldn't give us a breakdown for individual bits of the project, but agreed that replastering would only cost about £4,000 to £6,000. We can see and hear that the plaster has blown in places so we expected this to be an expensive job. He said we couldn't hang wallpaper on the existing walls and didn't seem interested in taking on the project if he couldn't mess about renovating the bannisters (which we suggested ignoring to cut costs).

To me, the quote seems absurd. A whole new back extension with a luxury finish is only £50k - at least according to the interiors magazines I read.

Are we underestimating the cost of this project? In general, his business model hasn't worked for us as I work from home and prefer to choose my own suppliers for tiles, paint, etc.

Sounds absolutely ridiculous to me OP. Shop around! Go on some websites and check out tradesmen with reviews. Ask around at work/school/neighbours. Get more quotes.

He probably just does not want the job.
Get more quotes.

@TheInvisible. I agree. I don't think he wants the job.

He told us that our original 1890 conservatory was 'the worst job he'd ever had' as it was 99% rotten timbers glued together with expanding foam. The entire roof needed replacing and it took months (and thousands of pounds). A neighbour, who lived in our house twenty years ago, said he considered demolishing the conservatory when he lived there - he was amazed we'd managed to save it.

Anyhow, the decorator now believes our entire house is a deathtrap and removing lining paper from the hall for redecoration will cause the entire dividing wall between the terraces to collapse (bear in mind, this house had a very clean survey, given it's age. It's not a wreck).

He seems to be quoting to cover his expenses in a nightmare scenario of major structural engineering work where the entire wall and hall ceiling collapses, which I suspect is a job he doesn't want to do.

He also made it clear prefers working on 'gut-and-rebuild' jobs where original period features - architraves, bannisters, coving, doors - go into a skip and are replaced by a contemporary minimalist finish. He told us he doesn't like having to repair old things as they don't look as good as new, and clients are always disappointed. This was despite us telling him that 'stuff looking old' is part-and-parcel of a house with period features intact.

he is not the man for you or your job!
shop around. if needs be do it in stages. find a really good plasterer and a seperate decorator. unless you are living in a historic palace, 20k is a clear message they dont want the work

Is this a typical London Victorian terrace? He's saying that removing the wallpaper is going to cause the collapse of the wall between you and your neighbour that has stood for more than a hundred years? He sounds like a bit of a twit tbh. Ask on your local neighbourhood forum or Facebook page for plasterer recommendations and start from there.

It sounds like he doesn’t want the job so has charged you a high price and also you and he don’t agree on the way to carry it out: I would definitely look for someone else.

That's ridiculously high. We're in a Victorian terrace in north London and we're having our kitchen/diner reconfigured (steel beams inserted) and a new one fitted, bathroom re-done and two reception rooms opened up into one and re-plastered and redecorated and our bill is 40k (not including fixtures). You should definitely get more quotes, OP.

And agree with others - he's making it very clear he thinks it will be a nightmare job. If you go with him, it probably will be.

I agree that sounds ridiculous and that they are pricing themselves out of the job deliberately.

I have a fantastic plasterer who is trained in restoring period features as well as the normal walls/ceilings work. He's based in north Surrey but works in London too. If you want his details I'm happy to PM them.

@OneDayIWillHaveAGreatUsername - PM'd you.

@notmyredditusername365 - it's a standard Victorian mid-terrace. The hall looks like pretty much every Victorian hall pictured on Pinterest (staircase up one side, decorative cornicing, etc.)

So to recap - you’d like all the walls stripped, prepped, replastered, wallpapered, the stairs stripped/sanded and repainted (lots of little fiddly Victorian spindles?), all the door frames and doors stripped/sanded and repaired + carpentry work, presumably some fiddly cornicing attended to? In a house with high ceilings over 3 levels?

It will cost £££ as it sounds like a very labour intensive job. Tradesmen in London tend to cost 200-250 per day and that’s without the mark up for the main contractor overseeing and responsible for the job. Just to put it in perspective, a single door and frame will require 2-3 man-days to sort out and plastering the lot will easily take a week (they’ll need to build a scaffold to even access stuff).

So yes, it might not look it but it’s a very big job with high labour costs.

JoJo a single door will NOT take two to three days. My DH is a painter and decorator. He's done heritage properties.

@JoJoSM2 No. We want to put up some wallpaper and replace the carpet. We wanted to touch up the spindles as they're chipped.

The decorator said we wouldn't get a good finish unless we replastered before applying the wallpaper. Then he added vast numbers of labour-intensive jobs that we'd never asked for, such as heat stripping, repairing and repainting the spindles.

Despite spending nearly half an hour quizzing him, he wasn't prepared to break out the costs of each individual piece of work. We wanted to reduce costs to do it in stages and, also, to DIY sections of the work.

@JoJoSM2 - it's also the case that he was charging 20% of the cost for main contractor work and, going by the conservatory, I ended up doing most of the project management and requisitioning of materials.

That cost me about £1,500 in lost productivity over two months (I'm self-employed and time track my project work), which is significantly less than the nearly £4,000 he was proposing to charge.

Having my 1930s hallway stripped, the plaster patched & reskimmed and redecorated is costing us around £2,500. Now, my builders are already in the house but we added this on. When they stripped the wallpaper there were some big holes so there was a decent amount of repair work. But £20k is ridiculous.

That’s a ridiculous quote

@Londonwriter I've replied to your PM

Ajas, well how long would he take to strip a period door + frame and paint it properly (undercoat + 2 coats or whatever constitutes a proper job) + do the carpentry so that it sits properly?

OP, you clearly won't get on with this builder so no point having him again especially if you weren't happy with how things were last time. And yes, it's a bad sign if they can't offer a breakdown of the quote.

However, it is true that if you want to wallpaper over existing stuff, it's likely to be quite a botch unless you sort out the walls first.

I'm also confused what you mean by 'touching up' chipped spindles: you can't paint over things that haven't been sanded or stripped first. If things are chipped then you need to fill and sand them into shape - again a fiddly job if you've got curved spindles and want it done properly.

Perhaps you'd be better off getting in a decorator to do the wallpaper and be explicit to go over existing walls at your own risk/responsibility. Then get your carpet from a carpet shop (they all offer fitting) and for the spindles, just dab the paint yourself over the chips - no point getting a professional in for that. That's likely to cost under 5k all in.

@JoJoSM2 Our current plan is to get multiple quotes for a plasterer to repair the blown plasterwork and prep the walls.

Then I plan to strip, repair and sand the woodwork (after we've lead tested the existing paint) myself. This stops a decorator trying to charge an arm-and-a-leg for prepping spindles for painting. Also stops the misery of having workmen in for weeks (correctly or otherwise, the decorator claimed our stairwell would take nine weeks of work for multiple people).

We'll get a carpenter to fix the doors and someone to fit the wallpaper on the high sloping bits, and then we'll fit the carpet. We've already chosen a stair carpet from a company who fit carpets, and who we've used before (bear in mind, carpet fitting was not in the £20k quote - I was supplying my own carpet).

Regardless of whether it costs £££, I'm glad other Mumsnetters think that £20k quote doesn't stack up. There are millions of Victorian houses in this country and in London itself. Although London house prices are crazy, they largely don't reflect the wealth of the occupants. Most people in our terrace are 50-somethings arty types who bought twenty years ago. Most of them have tidy, painted hallways and doors that don't fall off. Some of them have replastered - more than once. Their houses are, overall, in no worse shape than this one. Some of them DIY, but I'm not tripping over the Mercedes' they bought with the money saved on redecoration work (with materials, the full job was going in that direction).

I can potentially see our hall costing £8-10k for labour in London (£4-6k for plastering, £2k for papering, and £2k for carpentry and prepping the fiddly woodwork on the bannisters). That's already mega-bucks, but fair enough, it's three-storey Victorian with high ceilings, the plaster is blown in places, several doors don't fit properly and one fell off due to a crack in the architrave (I repaired the frame last weekend). But £15k non-plaster labour applied across the entire house is £55k of work just for minor repairs and decorating. I'd be expecting handpainted Chinoiserie silk wallpapers for that.