stripped bare - what next ?

[masochists-r-us]

Hi
My Husband has now dutifully removed all the gypsum plaster that had been applied to the walls of our 400 year old sitting room and we're back the stone.
Ready to plaster and want to use lime, but have been horrified by a quote we received for £1500 excluding materials.
Please someone in the know,what do we need 2 under coats and a finshing coat ? What's a reasonable amount to pay ? How long should it all take ? Is it reasonable to use a regular plasterer and expect them to be able to work with lime or do we need a specialist ? Any other words of wisdom would be much appreciated.
Thanks

 

[DaveBrigg]

Hi
It's not often that the words 'stripped bare' and 'masochist' appear in the same post, but welcome to the forum. There are a few experts here who will hopefully give a more informed opinion. However, to start you off...
In a recent conversation with a lime plasterer a cost of £150 a day, or £200 if he could get it, was quoted. This will vary depending on where you live. To apply two coats to an average sized sitting room should not take more than 4 days at the most, which makes your quote sound expensive. However, we were recently quoted £800 to repair a couple of square metres of ceiling, which would suggest the reverse is true. After looking online and in the Yellow pages I discovered that some lime plasterers do not advertise; if you can find out who supplies lime locally they may be able to give you a few phone numbers.
Lime plastering is not the same as using gypsum, although there is no reason why someone cannot be skilled at both. I would be wary of employing someone with little or no experience of using lime.
There are several places which offer courses to teach you how to do it yourself. This approach is often recommended on this forum, and if it is likely that you will need more plastering in the future, it could be a sound investment, as well as fun. However, when starting out it is probably best not to tackle a whole room, or somewhere where the walls are going to be seen a lot, which makes the sitting room far from the ideal choice to practise for a new career.

 

[Flyfisher]

Hopefully one of the resident lime experts will be along shortly but in the meantime it would help to know the area of walling to be plastered in order to judge the £1500 you've been quoted.

Edit: I should have waited another 2 minutes before posting!

 

[Schoolmarm]

Before you rip the plaster off any more walls in your house, please check that the gypsum is not a skim over the lime. I would be really surprised if all your lime had been removed and gypsum applied.

 

[AMc]

A word of caution - As I understand the rules, ripping more than 25% of the plaster off a wall (no matter how inappropriate it may be) may be considered as 'renewing a thermal element' not a repair. At that point building control regulations may apply and require you to insulate the wall. At best this will make your room much warmer & slightly smaller. At worst it could make it a lot smaller and lead to damp.
The only exceptions to this would be - if you're listed, in which case you needed Listed Building Consent or if you would lose more than 5% of floor space or the cost of insulation wouldn't be justified by simple payback over 10(?) years.

I've been warned not to repoint the uninsulated walls at the front of my house while I'm renovating the back as if both works are done at the same time I might be expected to insulate internally & replaster or insulate externally and render in the part of the house I'm not working on. I am insulating internally at the back because there was nothing but bare brick to begin with (all original features stripped long ago). In principal I think insulating walls and lowering bills is a sensible thing to do but I'm not destroying the panelling in the front for the sake of it.

I would make a speculative call to your local Building Control Office to discuss a house you're considering buying that needs the gypsum stripping and lime applying to deal with a damp issue - see what they think about rules and consents. My dept. seems pretty helpful. Of course they may never find out, but an inquisitive solicitor when you sell could insist you get retrospective consent as a condition of sale.

A minefield. :roll: sorry if that reads as doom mongering, but forewarned is forearmed. Welcome to the forum

 

[vicky whitworth]

Hi, I was really interested in your earlier post aMc. We are having an extension built which is subject to building control. It should be finished by Xmas. It's not a listed building. We have now asked the builder to remove the internal cement render and plaster from our parlour and pantry (rubble stone solid walled cottage) and re-plaster in lime as the cement is trashing the place - room areas 4m x 4m and 4m x 2m. Would be wise, in the light of what you said to get the new extension signed off by building control first before we remove the cement and re-plaster?

 

[inwood]

Before you rip the plaster off any more walls in your house, please check that the gypsum is not a skim over the lime. I would be really surprised if all your lime had been removed and gypsum applied.

The whole of our kitchen has a gypsum levelling coat (bonding) onto the stone work, with bitumen coating, gypsum scratch coat and gypsum skim. It must have been a vision in pink before it was painted with plastic. Having said that it doesn't appear to be causing any issues (that I can see :?) so I'm not going to start wholesale replacement - yet!

 

[AMc]

I am neither a lawyer nor a building professional so don't take my word for it as anything other than an opinion!

Would be wise, in the light of what you said to get the new extension signed off by building control first before we remove the cement and re-plaster?

I would think so, in practice there is a lot of interpretation in building control I would err on the side of caution. If I understand the rules correctly (and I may not), renewing the plaster on more than 25% of the wall can be interpreted as renewal not repair.

Of course there are sound reasons to insulate walls if you're going back to bare brick, but if you don't want to then I wouldn't confuse the issue with your existing works.

 

[masochists-r-us]

Thanks everyone for your replies.
Husband will be booked on lime plastering course forthwith and before we accept any quotes from the professionals.