Help - catastrophic renovation failure - very long, sorry!

[ThriceWoe]

Have picked an all-too-appropriate name for this and I'm afraid it's a saga - but I'll try to be concise! Dp and I fell for a very old house and bought it, knowing it needed major renovation. We're NOT Grand Designs types who love nothing more than knocking up an RSJ for fun, but we have persevered and in 6 years, have virtually rebuilt the house as the full horror of previous bodgings has become apparent.
The final major job was dealing with the old lath-and-plaster walls and ceilings in the living-room, stairwell and upstairs landing. We wanted to do it in materials sympathetic to the age of the house, so decided it had to be lime plaster - which is expensive and labour-intensive but allows old timbers and bricks to breathe, move etc. 3 firms came to look at the job and we chose one whose boss was clearly very knowledgeable, loved old buildings, and had been running his company for 20+ years. They do lots of work on listed properties MUCH grander than ours, so we felt they had the know-how to tackle it.

They didn't think it was possible to repair the existing plaster (which was very patched-up and grotty underneath miles of woodchip)and everything needed to be ripped off and redone from scratch. We accepted their judgement and proceeded to endure months of chaos while the house became a filthy building site (we had no choice but to live there as we both work partly from home). All the rooms lead off the landing or living-room so it was completely disruptive. EVERYTHING was covered in plaster-dust, plastic sheeting was everywhere, and we lived in one bedroom and the kitchen. Finally it was over and in exchange for an eye-watering sum of money (though admittedly in line with the other 2 quotes) we could think about trying to restore order.
At which point, 2 of the 3 panels of the newly-plastered downstairs ceiling collapsed, one a few weeks after the other - anyone standing underneath could have been killed but thank heavens both events happened when the room was empty.

To cut a long story short, we were just stunned, the builder was guarded and wouldn't admit to what had gone wrong, but they came back and re-plastered. We were worried about the remaining (un-collapsed) panel of ceiling but he was adamant this was OK and insisted that they had NEVER had a problem like this before. So we decorated, moved the furniture back and got on with life.
Now fast-forward 2 years....we are having to have the bathroom gutted and redone (for reasons actually connected to the plastering works, but won't go into that). And you've guessed it - the third panel of ceiling has now collapsed. Builder has come back and just says he doesn't understand and once again, this problem has never happened before or since. It's blindingly obvious that the plaster was mixed wrongly and we're just appalled that their (supposedly very experienced) plasterer failed to notice, but builder, while admitting something went horribly wrong, won't be drawn and certainly isn't offering any sort of redress. Our crisis meeting was all very polite but we now just don't know where to go next. They have said they'll come back and re-do it but we have no confidence in them - how do we know it'll be OK? What about all the other plaster upstairs which we are now afraid might also collapse? I can't face having it all ripped off and done again as it creates such massive chaos - don't think I can bear to live through months of that again. We trusted them to do a professional job and it's a disaster. Should we be looking at legal action/compensation? Just don't know what to do for the best. Help!

I would go to CAB and see what they say - I think you should at the VERY least be entitled to a full refund of the money, and quite probably some compensation. And you also need guarantees on the replacement work.

Huge sympathies! I know how hideous lath and plaster is, and what a complete mess it makes, and how disruptive plastering is!

Wow, that was quick! Obviously a fellow-sufferer! Thanks tortoiseSHELL, good to know that you feel we should be thinking of compensation. I'm actually afraid to say exactly how much it cost, but it was thousands. LOTS of thousands. Yes, it's a very skilled job and that's what it costs, which we accept, but the thing is that we didn't GET a skilled job, we got a cock-up.

We've very rarely used professionals (dh is Mr DIY ), but I think if you took them to a tribunal you'd have a really good chance of getting refund/compensation and it would only cost £30-£50 or so. Good luck - it's a nightmare isn't it!

Should add that I'm not someone who thinks money should be handed out willy-nilly for every minor trauma, but this is just not right....

I'd probably think 'stuff conservation' and get some nice eager Poles in to do regular plastering on the bit that fell down (or all ceilings and pray the walls stay put. But that's just being pragmatic, I think.
then I would dream of burning down the first plasterers house

we would have done the work ourselves if we thought we could have tackled something on that scale - but we thought they were the professionals. Boy, how wrong can you be!

It does sound awful. And you must feel so nervous in your own house when bits of it keep falling down.

I've almost got to that stage,MsD! But we wanted to do all the 'right' things, ironically. Conservationists are hard-line about these things and tbh, I do agree - but it's nightmares like this that make you feel like abandoning all your worthy principles...

DH is in the building trade and my general response would be to give the original builder the chance to sort it out for you (free of charge of course) BUT...this is a major error on their part and as you point out this could have been far worse if someone were underneath.

When we have been asked to repair existing plaster in the condition you describe generally we would point people in the direction of replastering rather than repair as the cost is relatively small and the finished effect is going to be better. This would be for modern plaster not lime though...

Personally I would research the PROCEDURE for lime plastering to give yourself some idea as to what went wrong. e.g if the ceiling had been re-boarded and an area the size of the board fell down then obviously the board was not fixed properly prior to plastering - if a rough chunk came down then the fault probably lays with the lime plaster itself.

Either way I can understand you being concerned, personally I would want all the work they did removed and re-done at his cost and by an alternative contractor.

Do you know anyone in a similar property to perhaps get the name of a reputable builder who also does lime plaster and get a second opinion?

Hmmm, v. interesting, WW.....in fact, dp and myself have since both been on one-day courses and learned a lot more about lime plaster, so are fairly clued-up - and hence became even more worried, if possible . Sorry, don't want to get too boring and technical but lime plaster should have animal hair mixed in with it to help make it stick together. There needs to be a lot, too - and the plaster that fell down has practically none. It's also an extremely sandy mix so, of course, the sand holds until it dries out but then doesn't have any strength or give, and just collapses under its own weight. In each of the 3 cases, the huge chunk of ceiling just sheared away completely from the laths like a big pancake.

If possible I would definately go for a second opinion..specially if you still have a chunk of what fell down.

tbh you cant be in business for a while without someone being unhappy with your work its how you handle it that makes the difference. He is in a specialist area so should be able to afford to sort this out for you...try to keep it amiable if possible as you stand more chance of getting somewhere.

We have had an occasion where someone wasnt happy with us, his wife had approved the work before hubby left at the end of the job

The guy was a pain in the arse from the start and although in that case we knew he was a chancer and had gone out of our way to accommodate him we charged him less anyway. No builder who is any good wants to get into a dispute with a client.

Yes indeed, we now have a skipful of the stuff to spare!
dp has now contacted a professional who, as it turns out, does a lot of expert-witnessing in such disputes. Hopefully we can get him to come and see what he thinks. We do have a really fantastic one-man-band builder who we would have used for the plastering job if he could have managed it on his own. He's here to do the bathroom works (in fact, he inadvertently triggered the collapse as the bathroom's over the offending ceiling and he had the temerity to walk across the floor!) and thinks it's pretty shoddy. He reckons it should all be done again but as I say, I can't cope with the idea of the whole dreadful process having to happen again. One day at a time, I guess. We'll see what happens after a professional second opinion. But oh, I'm SO fed up.....all I wanted was for the house to be finished, and instead it feels as though we're right back to square one....

Hmm well much as I get my knickers in a twist if I feel someone is not respectful to the style of an old house unless the lime plaster looks massively different or modern plaster will damage the structure of the existing house...personally I would just go for modern plaster or are you not allowed to?

Sorry to drone on about it but, after the first two successive ceiling collapses, the builder submitted his final bill and it was for the full amount - no reduction whatsoever despite the unbelievable hassle we'd had. To make it that bit worse, the second collapse happened on the very day that I'd just re-varnished the parquet floor in the hall which we'd had to have re-sanded after the plastering works. The ceiling fell on the still-wet floor. So all that had to be done again too.

I wrote to the builder at length, explaining that I was witholding the final £500, not least to have the floor re-sanded and re-varnished. Now I think I was a mug and should have refused to pay any more at all. Dp and I are polite people and don't go in for arguing and screaming, but seems to me we've been too reasonable here, perhaps.

sorry, WW, am just rambling on here but - no, the house isn't listed (strangely, as it's 400 yrs old in parts)so in theory we could have it replastered in gypsum. But there are problems to do with the, ahem, characterful nature of the ceiling (in other words, it's lumpy and bumpy and slopes in Olde Worlde 17th C style), so lime is really the way to go to be sympathetic to possible movement of the timber. We might find that we end up having to fill recurrent cracks in modern plaster. But I appreciate the thought!

Ahh well if there are specific reasons to use lime then fair enough but if you were just being precious for historical reasons then its a bit silly if the cost involved is going to mean you cant do other things to restore the house iykwim.

Im not touting for business LOL hubby sub contracts the plastering

Point taken! But on the whole I do think that older buildings generally should be renovated with the materials they were built with, as far as possible.....modern materials cause all sorts of problems if applied unsympathetically. We had to strip off a whole wall of external cement render because it wasn't letting the timber frame breathe....and had to renew loads of timbers because they'd just rotted where the render had cracked and let water in. But there are always compromises though - after all, our house wouldn't have had a bathroom originally, and there'd probably have been animals bedding down in the living room, but that's taking authenticity a bit too far