Plasterer damaged carpet

storeyboy10

Hi I am after some advice please.

We are in the process of having our house rewired by an electrician. He took the upstairs landing carpet up in order to access beneath the floorboards. He placed the carpet in the back bedroom in the corner of the floor.

I now have a local plasterer in to skim some ceilings and put right the walls after the electricians chasing.

I got a call last night from the electrician to say he had finished with the floorboard work and he went to get the carpet to lay it back again, but he found it laid out in the back room protecting the floor as the plasterer did his work - but worse than this the plasterer has cut a piece off (about a metre long)!

When I spoke to the plasterer he said he thought it was scrap carpet - no idea why he didn't check this with me first!

It's a decent carpet - only a few years old and quite expensive, but we did not purchase it (previous house owners did)

I am paying £650 for the work - how should I approach the plasterer about repair or compensation?

Doozergirl

Oh dear. I can see why a small, odd shaped piece of used carpet in a bigger room might look to a plasterer as it was purposely left for him to protect another floor. It sounds like he was trying to be good.

Miscommunication. Not exactly one person's fault. You're the employer and effectively the project manager so it's your job to communicate across the two.

phill99

I agree with Doozergirl.

If you arelooking for compensation, don't expect much. He is only liable to put you in the same position priorto any damage ie reimburse you for a second hand carpet. Whats a second hand piece of carpet worth that will only fit your landing? £30? £50?.

DirectDebacle

Doozergirl wrote: »

Oh dear. I can see why a small, odd shaped piece of used carpet in a bigger room might look to a plasterer as it was purposely left for him to protect another floor. It sounds like he was trying to be good.

Miscommunication. Not exactly one person's fault. You're the employer and effectively the project manager so it's your job to communicate across the two.

Really? Sounds like he couldn't care less. Any decent tradesman would bring their own dustsheets to protect the homeowners property.

The fault is entirely that of the plasterers.

DirectDebacle

phill99 wrote: »

I agree with Doozergirl.

If you arelooking for compensation, don't expect much. He is only liable to put you in the same position priorto any damage ie reimburse you for a second hand carpet. Whats a second hand piece of carpet worth that will only fit your landing? £30? £50?.

If you are expecting compensation ask the plasterer to replace the carpet or request the name of his public liability insurers so they can make restitution.

Doozergirl

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Really? Sounds like he couldn't care less. Any decent tradesman would bring their own dustsheets to protect the homeowners property.

The fault is entirely that of the plasterers.

It doesn't sound like anyone has been supervised on site. This is exactly the sort of stuff that happens when people aren't.

I'm sure the plasterer would have had his own stuff, too, but it is absolutely not outside the realms of unreasonableness that a used carpet that didn't fit might have been left for him. Indeed why would someone put a nice carpet in a room for safekeeping where the ceiling was being plastered? I'm trying to see it from the perspective of what is reasonable. Destroying a laid carpet or cutting off a piece of something that looked like the actual room carpet would be unforgivable, but a landing carpet would easily have looked like scrap in the wrong room in a house undergoing work.

Before the customer looks for a brand new carpet on the plasterer, I think they need to consider what is reasonable.

DirectDebacle

Perhaps you find poor standards acceptable. I don't and apply the highest standards of professionalism I can. Turning up to someones house to do work that will create mess requires dustsheeting from the entrance to the work area. In this case entrance door, hall, stairs, landing and room being worked in. The OP property has been damaged by an uncaring tradesman and that tradesman needs to put the matter right. It is that simple.

I don't understand why you are trying to defend such poor working practices. The OP is asking for advice on how to have the damage rectified not half baked ideas on how to justify it.

It doesn't sound like anyone has been supervised on site. This is exactly the sort of stuff that happens when people aren't.

Speak for yourself. It doesn't happen on my jobs. There are plenty of responsible and conscientious trades people out there.

DRP

Sound like bad communication on all sides - OP, plasterer and electrician... and it is the OPs job to ensure good communication.

I can see Doozergirl's point -normally a room to be plastered would be completely cleared of anything that you don't want ruined!

Any actions would depend on the relationship the OP wishes to maintain with the plasterer in the future... and realistically what is a 2nd hand hall carpet worth? OP is hardly going to get plasterer to replace new-for-old...

warmhands.coldheart

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Perhaps you find poor standards acceptable. I don't and apply the highest standards of professionalism I can. Turning up to someones house to do work that will create mess requires dustsheeting from the entrance to the work area. In this case entrance door, hall, stairs, landing and room being worked in. The OP property has been damaged by an uncaring tradesman and that tradesman needs to put the matter right. It is that simple......

True BUT.... you get what you pay for... if you'd be expected to do all you suggest, which yes would be the most professional and bets way of doing it, you'll pay for that service... if you want something done at a reasonable affordable budget cost you'll not get that service.....

I did up my house and is still a WIP....... I cut costs by doing all the donkey work and stuff like supplying/laying dust sheets, clearing rooms etc..etc.. etc.. myself..... I made all aware of what I was doing and what they were to do..... as said before all down to communication.....

An unfortunate accident/misunderstanding I'd put it down to.....

Doozergirl

DirectDebacle wrote: »

Perhaps you find poor standards acceptable. I don't and apply the highest standards of professionalism I can. Turning up to someones house to do work that will create mess requires dustsheeting from the entrance to the work area. In this case entrance door, hall, stairs, landing and room being worked in. The OP property has been damaged by an uncaring tradesman and that tradesman needs to put the matter right. It is that simple.

I don't understand why you are trying to defend such poor working practices. The OP is asking for advice on how to have the damage rectified not half baked ideas on how to justify it.



Speak for yourself. It doesn't happen on my jobs. There are plenty of responsible and conscientious trades people out there.

I'm trying to be pragmatic and look at the reasons why, not to just point blame squarely as if it were some deliberate act of vandalism.

How dare you criticise my personal standards!

It wouldn't happen on my jobs because every trade is entirely managed by us and we wouldn't work anywhere where responsibilities were expected to be taken individually by trades - precisely because stuff like this does happen when a client tries to save money by employing separately but doesn't manage the job overall. It's inexperience and miscommunication. Anyone in the construction industry knows that even smaller jobs need managing correctly because trades will work to what suits them and costs will be incurred because no one is responsible for organising. It's naive to think otherwise. Where there are several individuals, they need to managed as a team. The carpet should have been somewhere sensible, not in a room about to be plastered. One can almost imagine the it wasn't rolled perfectly and put to one side either. Someone should have checked the room was clear, someone could have told the plasterer it was going back on the landing. Yes, the plasterer did what he did but we all know it wasn't malicious. He didn't chop up a customer's fancy carpet because he cba to bring a dust sheet. There were many ways to avoid what happened and it could have been forseen. On my job this would have been my fault for not communicating properly. I understand what my role is.

It all boils down to this:
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

The OP could have employed someone to look after it all. It would have cost more than the lost carpet. So there's a lesson. There are risks and benefits to both ways.

warmhands.coldheart

Doozergirl wrote: »

It all boils down to this:
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

The OP could have employed someone to look after it all. It would have cost more than the lost carpet. So there's a lesson. There are risks and benefits to both ways.

Really well put......... Sums it all up in a nutshell !!