Cleaning after plastering/decorating - who should be paying?

HillStreetBlues

sheramber said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

Advise landlord to find the source of damp rather than paying thousands for unnecessary work and then you won't have to clean, with all the money saved he might even keep that £100 off the rent offer. 

Proposed work won't solve the problem, only hide it (which doesn't really affect you as it's not your property) but if the source of damp is cured then there won't be any tidying up from all the unnecessary plastering.

In my view, if we returned the house to him in its current state, he would charge us heavily for the cost of cleaning

Sounds like the work has been done.

But then you have

The issue that has emerged is who is going to pay for cleaning the place once the work is done

ic

Dust I can accept, it will happen (and keep happening for a while).  However mess?  Has rubbish and materials been left behind by the trades?  They should have taken any bags of rubbish, old buckets, etc away.  Or do you mean plaster or paint has been splashed around in other rooms?

Bigphil1474

OP, your message is a little confusing. I read it as you are negotiating before the work is done, so no work has actually been done yet? I agree with above that damp proofing the wall is really just gonna hide the problem, and the source of the damp needs sorting. However, that's the landlords headache.

We had our living room re-plastered recently, which was all four walls and ceiling in a 24 square metre room. When the plasterers left, you wouldn't have known other than having wet plaster on the wall - room was spotless. They did leave a small bag of waste in the garden which we put in the bin. The plasterer should be covering everything properly. They covered our carpet with wide sticky back plastic stuff on a roll - great stuff, and all the windows were covered over in plastic sheeting. You might still get a bit of dust afterwards, but I'd agree with the landlord saying it will probably just need a bit of a dust and vac. Don't forget that it is a workplace during the works, and the workers have a duty to ensure your safety as much as theirs. If they permit dust to go everywhere and don't clean it up when they finish, they are potentially committing an offence.