Staggered by cost to replaster mid-terrace house, anyone else had quotes recently?

[DebtMassif]

Hi all, I've just had a rough quote for replastering a victorian mid-terrace in the South West. It's a 3-bed but one of the upstairs rooms will become a bathroom. I knew lime would be more expensive than modern plasters but we don't want to keep chasing damp patches around the walls forever and lime should solve the problem as the walls will be able to breathe.

The plasterer was very nice, super knowledgeable and experienced, gave us loads of info and then... and then... he said it would be about £50k! plus VAT!

He also said we would need to be out of the house for 3-4 months with no other work going on at the same time (eek)!

Has anyone else lime plastered their house or gotten as far as getting quotes?

People who work with lime are few and far between because it's more difficult and time-consuming. I presume he was giving you a price that included hacking off everything that's there and starting afresh from the stone. You don't want to try living in what will feel like a cave with all the work going on.

My guess is he's overwhelmed with work and is pricing as high as he possibly can. Basically he's telling you he's not bothered whether he gets the job or not. Have you explored the idea of dry-lining?

Join the 'your old house UK' group on Fsacebook.

We took off concrete and replastered a room ourselves with lime and the materials were around 2k but it took months! You can probably get a better quote but thee is a fair bit of waiting around to do while the walls are drying.

@DebtMassif
Deal with the damp!!! You don’t need lime plaster. If you don’t have a listed property it’s a waste of money in a small house.

Also you would never get the investment back so much better to sort the damp.

Taking the piss. Deal with the damp first. Then get regularly plastering.

It's approx £500 a room. You do the maths.

What's the existing plaster like?

Why's it damp? Where's the damp coming from?

Qualified surveyor here, you would be much better with lime plaster.

DH is a lime plasterer and says that is expensive but we are in East Anglia so slightly cheaper. He certainly wouldn't ask you to move out though, just would do one room at a time. He also said he'll do it for 40 grand and wasn't entirely joking!

Listen to the surveyor, a constant battle with damp is soul destroying, I've been there and got the t-shirt.

At £50?!! For a terrace. Deal with the damp! Cheaper!

Seriously, is it worth spending £50k to damp-proof your house? We're heading for a recession where it's possible that property values will fall. Is someone in a few years' time going to pay you £50k over the usual asking price of houses like yours because it's been lime plastered?

Of course a surveyor will tell you to get it lime plastered. It's not his money.

Is it? We just paid a grand to have our ceiling replastered in SE.

Just finished limeplastering our house, larger than yours, but took 6 months. It's so dusty, we lived through it though. We had one room where we left the artex ceiling and a plasterboard stud wall - the plasterer skimmed that in gypsum in less than a day for less than 200 quid. That showed me how massively longer it takes to use lime! The other rooms in lime took 3x 3 days each for a crew of 2 or 3 plasterers, after taking off the old plaster, which is soooo dusty. We did most of the taking off ourselves. You then must also ensure to only use breathable paint, so there is another expense. We are trusting Edward Bulmer's claim of breathability. His paints look fab, but we can't tell what's gypsum and what's new lime after it's painted. So maybe you could replaster the external walls in lime only but keep all internal walls in gypsum, as internal walls shouldn't suffer from damp. If you do replaster the external walls, you could add insulation at the time. We added cork under the lime. Also, some of our external walls were originally panelled. They are still fine after over 300 years and keep off damp, as there is air that circulates behind the panelling. We replicated the panelling in some rooms, and while impressive looking, it was much cheaper than lime plastering. I think wood panelling is better than plasterboard drylining, as the plasterboard can get damp. Hardwood, painted softwood or even moisture resistant MDF should hold up better in a slightly damp environment. We purposefully left little gaps beneath the skirting/above cornice to allow for air circulation. We paid about 150k for internal replastering and external repointing, although that included quite some lath work, too. Several ceilings and walls needed lath repairs or entirely rebuilding the lath before the plaster could go on. We are grade 1 listed, so no way to get away with plasterboard, but as these were all internal walls and ceilings I would have just done it in plasterboard if I would have been allowed to do so.

For regular plastering I paid £300 for one room to be plastered in SE. Surely better to treat the cause of the damp?

We are Victorian terrace and had damp
issues when we moved in due to: inadequate loft insulation, poorly fitted windows, poor ventilation and a party wall leak from the bathroom of the next door house. We spent around £9k on windows, doors, a dehumidifier and some plastering in one bedroom and resolved most issues. Just one room to be re plastered but we are waiting until we can do the whole room (kitchen).

Oh and the neighbour fixed the leak.

Ventilation and dehumidifier is your friends 50k is mental!!

I would continue trying to get someone to do lime plaster, I am also a big believer in houses being able to breathe. But I’d definitely get some more quotes- to me this does seem like someone who probably doesn’t want the job- and could you possibly do 1-2 rooms at a time, as this would be cheaper and you wouldn’t (hopefully) have to move out?

So many interesting replies, thank you! We only moved in a few weeks ago and I have a broken leg (GREAT timing). On that note, the downstairs bathroom I couldn't wait to move upstairs has turned out to be a lifesaver! The stairs are so steep is going to be weeks yet before I get up them - I haven't seen the upstairs of my own house since we put an offer in 😅

I think the cause of the damp is a combination of condensation and draughts (there are some gaps where the windows meet the wall) and some damaged external render that the previous owners fixed earlier this year.

The plaster we can see that isn't damp seems to be OK, but there's a lot of old anaglypta wallpaper covering the walls along the hallway, stairs and landing, so when that comes off it might just take the plaster with it. Maybe I'll have a really big exposed brick feature wall 😂

I'd been thinking that we may as well do the whole lot in one go, but that's out of the question if it costs £50k. Reading through these replies, maybe it's best to just do the dampest room for now, which happens to be the one we'll turn into the upstairs bathroom. The rest of the damp patches are on one wall that joins with nextdoor - do you think that means it could be a leak from their side??

Thanks again everyone 😊

Why do you want to replace the plaster? I'm far from convinced it will solve your damp issue. If it's already lime then, as long as it's stuck to the masonry, I'd be wanting to repair it. Even if patches are falling off, I'd be repairing, ideally with same type of plaster. If it's been skimmed with multifinish - well that's a shame - but I'd be living with that.

And yes, it's very possible there's a leak near your party wall. be especially suspicious of bathrooms and kitchens.

Sounds like it could be a party wall leak. Have you spoken to the neighbours to see if they have had any issues? With us the neighbours were insistent that there was no leak but their bathroom was the other side of the wall so we had our suspicions. About 2yr after we moved in, a plumber bought the property next door, saw our wall and immediately ripped the bathroom out to find the problem. Found a leak, and huge hole in the wall filled with expanding foam and tiled over.. humidity in the whole house came down significantly after the wall dried out.

In the mean time we invested in a large meaco dehumidifier that kept major issues at bay.

We've just had one room replastered. External wall in lime, the rest boarded and skimmed. Cost £3,700. They had to hack the plaster off (which was horrific, dust absolutely everywhere. I'm still dusting neatly every day 1 month on!), then one wall had to be base plastered again before it could be boarded (old stone house, so lots of gaps and unlevel), the other was OK to just be boarded. For the external wall they had to build the lime up in layers.

Don't listen to people that say you don't need to use lime plaster if you have an old stone house, they are idiots. They would probably repoint their house in cement as well. Previous occupants used pink gypsum on the internal walls, and it has caused no end of problems with damp and blown plaster.

We need to do the other rooms but only doing them one at a time because of the upheaval! Luckily the plasterer lives around the corner to us so fits us in between jobs.

I can't believe you bought it knowing you'd need to do all this!

And pay out extra!

If you said this 2 years ago I would've agreed! We've been trying to buy in the area since before the pandemic but prices have gone up by about 50-100k or more in that time. We nearly gave up so many times but, eventually, we got this place for about 70K less than another one on the street sold for. Simply because it hasn't had any TLC in the last two decades so there wasn't a huge bidding war, unlike every other place we put an offer in! The other house was nicely done up and already had an upstairs bathroom, but I've since found out it also has damp so I'm feeling lucky despite the issues. Well, maybe not lucky, but at least I didn't spend that much more just to have to rip apart the house anyway!