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?

Adding that to the shopping list right now! And I'll have a chat with the neighbours next time we end up with their packages - seems like a good way to start the conversation non-confrontationally.

As with pp, the only walls that really need to “breathe” are the external walls. So plasterboard the internal walls and lime plaster the external wall, going room by room to minimize disruption and spread the cost. You can also remove the old plaster yourself, super easy just get a dust mask and a pry bar. If a party wall is damp then I would certainly look for leaks.

Get some more quotes in and compare what the different companies say and how much they'll charge.

Can I check, did the boards go over the existing plaster or did you have to remove all the plaster? Thanks!

Had the original plaster removed, but when we do the next room think we’ll probably just board over at the cost of a few inches of room size

The internal walls that aren’t external if you follow. The external internal walls will all have to be hacked off and replantares with lime due to the previous muppets using pink gypsum

ThatGirlInACountrySong · Yesterday 17:53

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

And pay out extra!

The worst thing that can happen is to buy a nicely done up house with a price to reflect the 'recent renovation', just to realise that the new plaster peels off and the paint blisters because they used cement and gypsum in places they shouldn't,like on external walls or over a leaking party wall. Always better to look for a house that needs updating, offer a reasonable price, and do it yourself. You might well go over budget/time doing it yourself, but longterm it is the better option as you know you've done it properly.

Btw, firms like Kreidezeit make a limebased filler to fill larger holes in limeplastered walls. Just removing your old wallpapers and fixing any leaks will already make a huge difference. You might only then have to do some cosmetic repairs to the walls with filler, and only tackle the walls that have serious problems.

I was shocked that a ‘normal’ plasterer costs £300 a day….
Just been quoted recently

Holy fuck. I’m mid terrace 3 bed and we’ve just had to get two rooms done plus two ceilings. £650. I’m in the north east Scotland though

How much do you think a skilled tradesman should charge? I think 300 is on the low side considering they can get 240 a day on a building site with no stress.

If its that damp how would lime plaster fix the damp issue? Or are you saying normal plaster is causing the damp?

Im interested to know as Im looking for a house now and aware that damp can be an issue in period properties.

As far as I understand it, if you have a brick or stone property built before cavity walls were a thing, they need to 'breathe' (allow some moisture to move from the inside to the out). The original plaster used when the house was built allowed this to happen but modern plasters don't, so condensation builds up and causes dampness. Then, the damp walls leach salt which draws more condensation into them and makes the whole thing worse. The house I've just bought has had chemical damp proofing done previously but now new bits of it are damp, and I've been told (and read) that a better solution is to remove the modern plaster and replace it with lime plaster so the house can breathe again.

This is just one kind of damp though, lime wouldn't be the solution if the damp was caused by a leak or if it was rising damp.

But as you can see from the other replies, there are different opinions about whether it's worth lime plastering the whole house if it's a mid-terrace/not your forever home. I think we're going to have to do a halfway solution and just lime plaster the external walls to keep the cost down.

Thanks @PrtScn! I'm going to get new quotes for just lime plastering the external walls 👍🏻

Agree with the surveyor who said lime plastering would be beneficial. Friend of mine had an old granite house with bad damp problems. Turned out some numpty of a previous owner had ‘rainproofed’ the exterior with av kind of plastic coating so the house could not breathe. Friend had the coating removed and lime plastered. Also fixed small leak in window frame. Problem solved.

Whoever said "500 quid a room" must know something I don't.

We recently plastered 1 small hallway and less than half a front room and it was well over 2 grand. Good trades are costing a bloody fortune these days.

Interesting topic. What happens with more modern houses then? Or the cavity keeps the inside warm enough that condensation isn’t an issue?

@DebtMassif thank you thats a great explanation.

We have lime on most outer walls. Where it was previously hacked off in 2 rooms, we have battened out and plasterboarded with insulating plasterboard, laving a gap behind to breathe (we also have cavity walls and very high quality brick- originally with lime exterior pointing, some moron later did it in cement, I'm going to rake that out and repoint with lime). Previously one room was dot-and dab on the outer walls, and the other batten and chipboard (kitchen, tiled where no cupboards)
I'm leaving the lime, even on internal walls, where it's still there, as the internal walls go right down to foundations, just like the external ones. And using breathable paint wherever there is still lime.
Sometimes it's a question of compromise.
We battened out the two external walls of one of the afroementioned rooms ourselves. Plasterers charged IIRC around 2 grand to board the two externals and skim all 4 with gypsum- but a lot of the cost was the insulated board, which is pretty expensive at the moment.

I;m in the South West in a small 2 bed cottage. We had our downstairs living area plaster hacked off, and re done with lime plaster about 2 years ago. We had dampall over the walls before due to a long term slow leak in old copper piping embedded in concrete under the flooring. We also dug out all the concrete and put breathable sub strata in. Lime plastering was the best thing we did, not a bit of damp since. It also insulates and keeps it warm in winter and cool in summer. We had quotes for about £5k but in the end found someone locally who did it for £2.5.

Oh by the way it does take a good few weeks to dry out properly before you can paint it and also takes a while to do as there were 3 layers and had to wait a couple of weeks or so from memory between each layer. We were staying somewhere else at the time due to the renovations.

@PrtScn can I be nosey and ask what area you're in? I've got a late 17C stone cottage with an internal damp patch so I'm trying to find someone to take a look who doesn't say I need a DPC. Thanks!

I’m in Wales, so probably no where near you

This isn't to do with plastering but a recommendation to get one of these:

www.amazon.co.uk/Nuaire-Drimaster-Eco-Heat-Switch/dp/B07S1P52L8/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3RJK4ZW3BPYXW&keywords=nuaire+drimaster&qid=1666389078&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI0LjE1IiwicXNhIjoiMy42OSIsInFzcCI6IjMuNDEifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=nuair%2Caps%2C158&sr=8-6

I couldn't recommend this unit more, we live in an old single walled house that was extremely prone to damp and condensation. Now no condensation or damp.