Kitchen redecorating

DIY Project – diary – week 16

I’ve had it with Bristish builders! The plasterer turned up last Saturday and asked if he could do the job there and then. At this point I should have said that he was supposed to call beforehand to arrange a time and date for doing the work, but I said OK,  he could get started  – I  just was eager to get on with the kitchen remodeling project..

He plastered over the old kitchen doorway and the walls where the tiles were and where the kitchen wall used to be. After a couple of hours he decided that he’d done enough and left… I asked when he’s going to finish the rest of the work, he said it depended on his other jobs… So he turned up again the next day, on a Sunday (!), to do a second skim and plastered over most of the dado-rail areas. After an hour’s work he had to leave…

We didn’t hear from him for days so I called him to ask, when he’s likely to finish the job. He said he’ll only be available at the weekend. In the meantime the plaster dried out and it didn’t seem to be very even. In fact the old lines were still visible and the surface was rather bumpy and crackly. Over the areas of the ex-dado rails it was absolutely awful. I painted over it to see what it’s going to look like. I wasn’t pleased. I decided to complain to him.

He turned up the following Saturday (no phone-call to arrange a time!) and I pointed out the faulty areas. He got rather sulky and went over the walls again with another skim. As to the dado rail marks, he said they would never be invisible because the areas should have been sanded down and the whole wall should have been plastered over. In fact it would have been easier for him to plaster over the walls rather than just the dado and the skirting… Then why didn’t he? I reminded him that it was he who, having looked at the state of the walls, advised us that the whole of the walls didn’t need to be plastered, only the areas where the plaster boards were damaged. He had previously said that with a skim the damaged areas will look good as new, and we "won’t see a thing". He got annoyed and, somewhat reluctantly, skimmed over the walls again and sanded back some of bumps of the damaged areas and plastered over them again. Then he declared that he finished his job and needed to go. And he wanted his payment. I pointed out that the job was not fully finished and I’d only pay him when it’s done… He wasn’t pleased and he needed some money. I offered to pay him for the work he’d completed. He found this unacceptable and just walked out! Unbelievable. He hasn’t finished the job, what he’s done is not good enough – and he’s the one who gets upset???

I’m sure this is not the end of it, because he is a relative of the floor-layer, whom we booked to do the parquet floor in a couple of weeks time. I hope he’ll do a better job! Unfortunately it was he who recommended the plasterer.

Anyway, this means that I’ll have to finish off the plastering. I’ve already started to sand down and fill the damaged parts of the plasterboard. Fill and sand… fill and sand… very tedious job but it has to be done. Then I’ll plaster over it. Plastering seems like icing a cake, so it can’t be that hard a skill to learn.