Cement Rendering - Scotland

chaholl

Hi All,

I'm hoping for an expert opinion on some work i'm having done.

I've recently built a double garage using dense concrete block, the total surface area is around 50 sq metres. Having tried my hand at DIY plastering in the past with less than idea results, i decided that rendering the building was a job best left to a professional.

I've asked around for a few quotes and they've ranged from £20 sq.m to £26 sq.m for a 2 coat finish. However, a guy i've used in the past offered to do the job for £600 if I bought all the materials, he reckoned it would take him and a labourer 2-3 days. Since this seemed like a very good price and i was happy with his work in the past i gave him the go ahead to start.

My problem is that he's now been at it for 5 days with probably another 2-3 days until it's complete and rather than his original estimate of £600, he's now charging a daily rate of £250 (in fairness he did give the estimate without seeing the job). If things proceed at the current pace i'll pay around £2000 for the job. Even taking my most expensive estimate the job should have cost no more than £1,300 and thats before taking into account the fact that i've paid for all the materials!

So my questions for any experts out there are:

1. Is this guy guy milking this job?
2. Is £250 per day a reasonable rate for an experienced plasterer with a labourer bearing in mind i'm footing the bill for all materials?
3. What would be a reasonable timeframe to complete a 50sq m double garage with a two coat finish?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

owls

250 is about right for a plasterer plus labourer.

but i dont understand how he is doing it, is he doing it in sections?
how is he working to day breaks ie how is the sections split up ?the thing with rendering is you have to do large sections at a time as you try and avoid a break in the render, so usually you will do a gable end of a garage in a one day then one side another day etc

depends on the size of areas basically me personally would get a scratch coat on in one dayof the 50 metres plus setting up bellcast beads window beads etc, top coat of an area of around 25m one day, if they are good areas with no fiddly bits. depends a lot on the height involved, accesability etc.at a guess id say around 4 days for completion without looking.

all depends on the speed of the plasterer and an efficient labourer but you do have to factor weather conditions in also.

chaholl

Thanks for your advice owls,

In fairness to the guy thats doing the work, one end of the garage is relatively high (about 3.6 metres) so i'm sure that'll add to the time required to complete the job. However i still feel that he's taking too long so as to increase his bill.

To give an idea of how things have been done:

Monday - Turned up with labourer, applied most of scratch coat and beading, couldn't complete because no scaffolding was available for the high gable end.
Tuesday - Completed scratch coat. (There was probably only 10-15m2 left to do, he had nothing else to do cos he screwed up the delivery of materials for the 2nd coat)
Wednesday - Turned up without labourer, applied 2nd coat to door gable (a total surface area of maybe 10m2)
Thursday - Turned up with labourer, spent a few hours "rubbing down" the render applied the previous day then applied 2nd code to 1 side (around 8m2 since it has 4 windows)
Friday - Applied 2nd coat to most of the high gable end (around 20m2).

Does this seem like a reasonable way to proceed? My concern is that a job that should have cost no more than £30 sq metre including materials is going to wind up costing closer to £50 sq metre and the only reason this guy got the job was because he was doing it cheap as a favour!

owls

Its obiously hard to say without looking,but you need to leave the backing coat 24 hours before the set coat is applied so the job should have been planned before.

If they have finished it now and they have draged it out, i suppose youll just have to put it down to experience and get a written quote next time.

chaholl

Thought i'd post the conclusion as a word of warning to anybody else facing a similar situation.

Got the job finally finshed today, it took a total of 8 days. The final price was way too much more than my other quotes so I paid for 5 days plus all materials. I offered to pay the rest if he could point me to a company that could confirm that his final price was reasonable. He declined to accept this invitation.

Not the best way to do business I admit, but it was just too much money to loose!

bigdoozer

sound typical. too late now, but 250 a day is OK if he does 8-10 hours.
We apply spray render at 30mtr per day. ???

Lips

@chaholl,

Your experience sounds so similar to mine - and I've been feeling like a muppet for a couple of weeks for getting sucked in with this kind of deal.

I was looking for some internal plasterwork. I got four quotes in, three ranged between £1200 and £1550 for the full job, but one gave me a day rate of £180/day with an expectation of 4 to 5 days work. As all the other quotes had estimated around 5 days, I reckoned that the day-rate deal was good value and went for it.

Cutting a very long and depressing story short, the expected end date kept getting pushed back, and there was saga after saga from the guys about how difficult the job was, how bad my walls were, how high my ceilings were etc etc etc. In an effort to motivate them to a big push to get finished, I paid them cash (£1400) and they committed to coming in at 8am the next day to finish off. In actual fact, they came in at 1pm and stayed for 50 minutes, then naffed off for the long, bank holiday weekend, leaving my hall completely unstarted.

Returning on the Tuesday (of their THIRD week on site), they basically said, 'we've had enough of this job, we're off', and beat a retreat with my £1400. So the four to five days for three rooms quote that they initially gave me, grew into three weeks on site (although they didn't work continuously by any means...), and a cost of £1400, and I only got two rooms done. PLUS they didn't do the 'snagging', so I had to spend 6 hours going round the two rooms with sandpaper and filler and doing all the wee polishes, cleaning up windowsills, doorframes etc. AND I had to scrape all the big globs of plaster off the floorboards, then mop the dust up, and take their empty plaster bags, PVA containers, Irn Bru bottles, coffee cups, McDonalds packing etc to the dump after they'd gone.

A lesson learned. A hard one.

I'm in Scotland too. I wonder if it's a mini trend? (conning cowboys, I mean, not muppet punters...:D )

- Lips