Damp in a supposedly renovated house

[Gingernaut]

I've blown the majority of my inheritance from my parents on a shitty house in a shitty town.

I engaged a builder who took far too long to refurbish my house, while I paid for storage and rent while the work was done.

The builder has disappeared, with things left a bit tatty round the edges.

Website is down, phones not being answered - this from a supposedly well established family firm.

I've just moved some furniture in the downstairs back room and found this.

This is the window side of the chimney breast.

There is a smaller area directly opposite.

The paint is flaking off and the plaster is clearly damp.

I am crying. This shit tip is dragging me down and I can't afford to move.

The house isn't worth half what I paid for it and what I've spent on that fucking cunt of a builder just hasn't been worth it.

Can anyone tell me how much more money I can expect to shell out to rectify this?

Are you sure it is damp? Sometimes if new plaster is not dealt with properly the paint doesn't stick properly. You can buy a damp meter easily to check if you haven't already. If it is damp, get a specialist out to diagnose the problem and give you a quote. We had some damp work done for about £600,but it really depends on what the specific problem is.

I think that looks more like they painted it too quickly. Plaster needs to dry out for a long time.

We had blown plaster where there was damp on the alcove of a chimney. The builder hacked it back to brick and then lined the wall with insulated plasterboard before skimming. That did the trick.

What's the other side of that wall?
Is there anything making the outside wall damp like a leaking drainpipe or even a pile of mud in the garden against the wall/damp course proofing. Something like that could generally be easily fixed.
As others have said though it could just be the new plaster is still drying out.

Terraced house.

The other side of both walls are neighbours.

I'm just so down about yet another thing going wrong, I can't think straight.

Thanks for trying to reassure me. I probably need to go to bed.

Doubt it is damp if you're terraced and that's the walls to the neighbours.

Probably didnt allow the plaster to dry long enough to paint

Damp is one of those things that everyone recoils in horror over, yet is actually often not terribly costly to fix, in the grand scheme of things. It’s par for the course with older properties. But as pps say, it could just be the plaster was still too wet when painted. How long did they leave the plaster to dry before painting? Can you remember what colour the new plaster was just before painting?

Used the wrong paint perhaps, that happened when a friend painted over a newly plastered wall.

We moved into our house and found what we thought was a damp patch on a similar internal wall. Neighbours didn't have issues. Ours was wallpapered, and it was peeling off. Took it all off and it turned out that it was a combination of plaster not been left long enough to dry and no gap left between concrete floor and the plaster. Often 'damp' is easy than you think to solve. My parents had a damp patch that was solely caused by a piece of wood breach the damp course. Looked terrible but once removed plaster dried out and was redecorated no more problems.

Good point, if they put a vinyl paint over still-damp plaster, this will pretty much be the result

I don't know.

The paint has been up on the walls for over 18 months.

I moved back in January 2018.

It was a shock to see it when I shifted the furniture and I could vacuum the paint off the walls.

Before, the damp was very bad, with a tide mark almost two feet off the floor.

This was down to a leaking lead water main and no damp membrane in the kitchen.

That was fun trying to sort that out.

Seeing the paint flaking off again just brought it all back.

Do you know the condition of the damp membrane/course in the room in question? How old is the house?

Don't know the condition, although there has been a damp course applied with little holes in the wall at some point before I bought the place.

Built around 1895 - 1905.

At this time of year, definitely a rush job.

A recent damp course should have a guarantee but recent work would make the walls wet.

Thanks guys

I'll see if it gets any worse, before I have a complete meltdown.

Your property was built at the same time as ours. Our damp proof course (originally a layer of slate, with a thin coat of bitumen painted over the underfloor), is now perishing and is in need of updating. Could this be the case for yours? Is the area in question one of the areas that was repaired? If so, as pp said, it should be under guarantee?

I, too, think it is hastily applied paint rather than damp. It's really not worth panicking over. It it were mine I would just repaint it and see how it looks in a few months time.

Thanks

Just an update.

I've sanded the walls, filled the cracks, cleaned it all down, waited for the filler to dry and primed it with watered down paint.

Two days later, the efflorescence was back.

I was ugly crying.

The patch hasn't spread, so it's unlikely to be active damp, but it means the skirting and plaster need to be removed, the cause needs to be remedied and the wall re-plastered.

Fuck.

More time off work and more expense.

Get a dehumidifier, I had an old cottage built in 1663 and had various issues with damp, it really helped to speed up the drying out process. It wasnt expensive, I bought it from b and q.

Yup.

Got a dehumidifier.