internal lime plastering

[shobo]

Hi
I had thought that I might attempt lime plastering myself, going on courses first.
Changed my mind - feel I don't have the upper body stamina.
So, I've had quotes for three internal walls - on average around 4m by 2m height. Would require knocking off all the old stuff back to bare stone.
Quotes vary from around £500 to £1000 per wall (the last one I think was rogue).
Anyone with experience of prices for this ?

(It wasn't easy to find people interested in doing it !)

 

[a twig]

Would need to know what lime plaster is being used? Are materials included in that price? How many coats? Are they doing all the aftercare etc

I was quoted £5k to do 3 walls and a ceiling of a 4.5m x 3.5m x 2.4m room which I had already hacked off and prepped, three coats of haired fat lime, all aftercare and materials included.

I declined on that occasion and did it myself for £600 in materials

 

[MatthewC]

Are you doing the removal of the old plaster yourself? Paying the contractor for that would add to the cost. If it's included then I would have thought £500 per wall is not a bad price for labour (3 or 4 coats?), and the £1000 is just a bit much but not totally over the top. The labour for my 3 bed semi in 2011 was about £18,000 total. I lost count of the cost of the mortar!

You are right not to try doing the plastering yourself though. I have done a small amount recently myself and realised then just how much strength and stamina the plasterer needed, qute apart from the skill to get a good finish of the rght thickness.

 

[Roger440]

Any suggestions on who to use for a plastering course. I need to do a fair bit, and i certainly wont be paying £5k to do it.

Bit worried about the comments on strength and stamina though........................................

 

[Abi Cott]

I've not done lime plastering but I did plaster a few rooms in my last house in gypsum. Some of it was skimming, some rooms required 3 coat work.

I was in my late 20s when I did it, and a very lightly built female.

I reckoned that you needed to work out how long it would take a professional and then times it by 6.

I did skim one ceiling, I will never ever ever attempt to do another ceiling. NEVER!

I ended up with the plastering job because I took to it much quicker than my other half. He was an excellent Diyer, but it took him 7 years to learn to plaster without it looking seriously rough. I took to it on day one. We decided it was as much an art as a skill and some people take to it much easier than others.

I'm now 42 and I'd happily tackle a chimney breast or something of a similar size, but for most of my lime plastering I'm employing somebody.

Hopefully that helps put "stamina" into perspective.

 

[88v8]

The £500-1000 range seems perfectly feasible, depending how busy the plasterer is. Around here, good lime plasterers are booked six months ahead. After all, lime takes time, with the wetting and trowelling and wetting and misting, it's not a walkaway job like gypsum.

Yesterday, I paid a chap £180 for a day's labour skimming and patching some areas of plasterboard with gypsum. Another chap had quoted me £400.**

I agree with Abi - definitely an art, and I don't have it. I did one wall in lime last year, it's Hobbitly rustic, I would never contemplate anything that needed to be flat.

Ivor

** in an outshut that was rebuilt in timber/plasterboard for the PO, and yes it did have LBC.

 

[shobo]

Thankyou guys,
Especially confirming my view that I don't want to try it myself !
I did go on a one day course at Mike Wye 'Use of Lime'. I would thoroughly recommend it. Although I have subsequently changed my mind about doing plastering, the course was useful to learn lime pointing which I have done.
My lime plasterer is gonna charge around £500 per wall for three coats and doing the knocking off himself, so it sounds a good deal.

 

[noj]

Sounds like a really good deal to me.

An alternative approach,if you couldn't find someone at the right price who understands tending lime and don't trust your skill/strength for the major level application, could be to buy readymix wet lime plaster and hire any decent spread to slap it on at the required thickness.

Then take on the tending element yourself (you've done the course), getting him back for the finish coat in a couple of weeks. Just the cost of of materials plus a day and half or two days of a plasterer's time?

edit: I think that's what I'm going to do for the ceiling of our utility room - walls are fine, but think the overhead stuff may be a bit ambitious for me