When the finish is important - get in the professionals
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Galvanised by finishing off the front room, I decided that I wanted the living room done too. Of course you don’t always get what you want. I knew from the schedule of works I’d done, there was no point in doing the floors in the living room until the kitchen and bathroom were finished. But, I reasoned, I could do everything else.
Then I sat and looked at the living room. There were great patches of bare brick at the bottom of the walls where the original skirting boards had been ripped off, there was half a doorjamb still stuck in one wall where I had pulled down a the wall, there was holes in the ceiling (again from the wall coming down), the stairs needed to be clad which was going to take a seriously large piece of timber. I realised that although I could do most of these things myself, I couldn’t do the plastering to a standard I would be happy with and I figured I’d probably take three months to get it all done on my own.
So I listed out the work I wanted doing, posted my job and got in three quotes. I got my three quotes within a couple of days of posting my job - thought it would take longer but they were all able to come round see the job and gave me a quote shortly after! The quote I picked in the end wasn’t the cheapest, although it was still very reasonable, it was from the guy who pointed out a couple of things that I’d missed - specifically that if I raised the radiator by four inches, not only would the skirting boards run smoothly underneath it, but back of the sofa wouldn’t block as much heat. So with my written quote for $2K safely tucked away, Pete (the builder) and I scheduled a date for the work to start.
I had some friends come and stay in the house during the day while I was out at work and I can’t tell you how good it was to come home each night and see how much work had progressed while I was away. That's the thing with renovations - do you trust the tradie and let them come and go, or do you hover and monitor what's going on? This time I chose to err on the side of caution but Pete's a really trustworthy gent so from now on I won't bother!
Pete started with the stairs - I wanted the underside of the stairs boarded out with T&G panelling and single planed plank of wood to reinforce the outside. I also wanted the plastering underneath the stairs touched up. There were some problems though, Pete soon discovered that the stairs weren’t really attached to anything, since the wall had been taken down (oops) but being a complete star he fixed this for me at no extra cost by screwing them on to the wall. He then stiffened the stairs by putting chocks in each tread, so they wouldn’t squeak when people were walking up them. He then boarded out the stairs and fitted new boarding to the edge of the landing.
When he’d finished it had gone from this
To this
He then moved on the to holes I’d torn in the ceiling and plastering up the corner where the doorjamb had originally been. I’m so, so pleased that I got a professional to do this for me. When he’d finished the plaster was like glass. Millions of times better than anything I could possibly have achieved on my own.
In that last picture you can see what I mean about the edge of the landing being re-boarded hopefully.Next were the skirting boards and the radiators. I won’t bore you with pictures of those, but I always think that skirting boards take a room from a building site to a renovation project. They’re weird things; you don’t realise how important they are until you don’t have any.Part of my agreement with Pete was that I would do painting and decorating to keep the costs down. So here’s one final picture of the new wall once it was painted.
I had to wait about a week for the plaster to dry properly and then apply two coats of watered down white emulsion before I could start painting it properly. I haven’t repainted the ceilings yet, but that’s something I can get on with when I’ve finished admiring my new walls and skirting boards.
I’m really pleased that I decided to get a professional in to do this work. Not only was Pete a lovely guy, but he found a few problems as he worked his way through the list I’d given him and he always managed to find good work-arounds for them. He also let me know of a few other things that would need doing which I hadn’t thought of and wasn’t at all put out when I told him I’d be doing them myself. I’ve got loads of other jobs that need doing in the house which are beyond my talents and I’ll certainly be asking Pete back to quote on these. Of course, I also didn't forget to pop my feedback online for all Pete's future customers to see :)
Plastering Quotes
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