If a room was newly plastered should there be cracks & gaps ?

[mamatomany]

I've just had a quote from a decorator who we've used before so I'm a bit at the prices for a newly plastered room walls/ceiling to be painted with one thin layer and then 2 normal layers £250 plus materials.
Does that seem a bit expensive bearing in mind there should be any cracks or gaps to fill should there ?

That doesn't sound expensive at all to me. If the decorator is painting onto fresh plaster, then they will probably spend a lot of time making sure the plaster is absolutely smooth. I have seen decorators at work on fresh plaster and it's amazing how may little imperfections they seem to find. There shouldn't be any gaps to fill in no but there may well be some hairline cracks from where the plaster has dried out.

Gosh, well I'm surprised they charged £100 to decorate two walls with wallpaper which seemed quite an intricate job I guess compared to rollering on some paint which Dh could do (and will be I suspect).

That price sounds reasonable to me for prep work (and there will be even on newly plastered wall as annh mentioned) and 3 coats plus drying time and clean up. £250 is 1 - 1.5 days pay, depending on where you live, so that sounds about right to good for the amount of work. You may get hairline cracks in the plaster over time. Normal part of the drying process and expansion/contraction of the sub surface.

Sounds about right. Our guy charges £150 a day and he's cheap compared to many.

Sorry, but it's what I would expect to pay as well - 1 - 2 days work involved there.

Eh? Someone is charging £250 to paint a room?? Nothing special about painting new plaster except you use plster paint which is quite expensive - our big tubs were £25 each (but we had a whole house to do), infact if you are near Berkshire you can have one as I forgot we had spare tubs in the garage and all the plaster is painted now.

Well as I said it seems a huge amount of money, I should have said it's a box room we don't live in a mansion I honestly think DH could do the whole thing in an afternoon, as for drying time well there was/is other things to be getting on with whilst is dries so not sat around watching it IYSWIM.
Anyway not prepared to pay that so end of really.
Thanks for the thoughts.

If it's new plaster then it needs a watered down coat of paint as otherwise the "proper paint" gets sucked up by the plaster and will be horribly patchy.

The plaster will also need sanding and filling in spots.

Bear in mind it's a lot quicker to put wallpaper up than to roller it!

£250 sounds very good to me (I would expect in the region of £400 a room - but near London so prices generally high).

It will need to be painted three times as others have said. Or twice if you cover plaster with primer first. And there will be cracks once the plaster's dried out!

Would it be better to wait a while then and see what happens with the plaster ?
I knew this should have been done at Christmas
Or maybe it's better to wallpaper it anyway ?

i hate wallpaper. thats why all our rooms have been stripped, skim plastered and then painted white.
why do ou want to wallpaper, having just had it plastered ? what colour do you want it ?

no never do at christmas. too damp. better to have it done in spring-into-summer (now!), so it all dries better.

It's got be plastered because the dado rail got taken off leaving bloody great holes in the walls, so that's a given.
I like the idea of just plaster and paint because my children tend to draw on the wallpaper at night but I guess I was thinking that if I put lining paper up and then painted that it might be the best of both worlds as I don't want to see cracks. It'll be white I think, neutral as possible as not sure which DC is going in there.