RainbowThistlePlastering
New Member
Afternoon all,
New to the forum, only found it yesterday. I'm starting up on my own in the new year and thought this would be a good place to get involved with, it's never a bad thing having people to call on when you need some advice.
For me I've been doing this job in various forms over the last 10 years. I started taping when I was 16 with my old man and failed miserably so took a job in a warehouse till I was 17 and then jacked it in. He thought that'd be a grand time to get some £25 a shift labour so I ended up back with him on a big new build house standing next to a mixer for 4 weeks mixing up K-rend. Thats a product I never want to see again in my life. When you're mixing that s**t for 10 hours a day and running up and down a 3 level scaffold loading out 2 spreads it makes you question the carrer choice ;D I got many full buckets of the stuff thrown at me from the top level because I sent up "pish water".
That was the start for me and I haven't looked back since. I ended up doing most of the stuff at one point or another, taping, skimming, sheeting, roughcasting etc. Unfortunately my old man died in 2005 and I never got the chance to actually gain any quals, I came up as a labourer and learned the trade over 5 years. Now with the whole CSCS card thing I'm looking to get my NVQ2 so I can actually show some form of recognised qualification. I'm off the mind that paper doens't mean much, we've all seen guys that have their certificates that are god awful, but it can't hurt and would make me feel better in front of clients.
Over the last year I've done a good few plastering jobs privately made some decent money out of it but I feel now is the time to push forward and start up properly on my onw rather than just do homers every now and again.
I ran my own company a few years ago doing something other than plastering so I'm fairly up to speed with general business running stuff but never ran a plastering company so any advice on how to market effectively and secure jobs would be appreciated. I already have a few contacts in guys that are painters/joiners who can throw work my way, I have a potential couple of good sized jobs in the new year. I'm based In Edinburgh, hopefully there's one or two of you that are also.
Cheers
New to the forum, only found it yesterday. I'm starting up on my own in the new year and thought this would be a good place to get involved with, it's never a bad thing having people to call on when you need some advice.
For me I've been doing this job in various forms over the last 10 years. I started taping when I was 16 with my old man and failed miserably so took a job in a warehouse till I was 17 and then jacked it in. He thought that'd be a grand time to get some £25 a shift labour so I ended up back with him on a big new build house standing next to a mixer for 4 weeks mixing up K-rend. Thats a product I never want to see again in my life. When you're mixing that s**t for 10 hours a day and running up and down a 3 level scaffold loading out 2 spreads it makes you question the carrer choice ;D I got many full buckets of the stuff thrown at me from the top level because I sent up "pish water".
That was the start for me and I haven't looked back since. I ended up doing most of the stuff at one point or another, taping, skimming, sheeting, roughcasting etc. Unfortunately my old man died in 2005 and I never got the chance to actually gain any quals, I came up as a labourer and learned the trade over 5 years. Now with the whole CSCS card thing I'm looking to get my NVQ2 so I can actually show some form of recognised qualification. I'm off the mind that paper doens't mean much, we've all seen guys that have their certificates that are god awful, but it can't hurt and would make me feel better in front of clients.
Over the last year I've done a good few plastering jobs privately made some decent money out of it but I feel now is the time to push forward and start up properly on my onw rather than just do homers every now and again.
I ran my own company a few years ago doing something other than plastering so I'm fairly up to speed with general business running stuff but never ran a plastering company so any advice on how to market effectively and secure jobs would be appreciated. I already have a few contacts in guys that are painters/joiners who can throw work my way, I have a potential couple of good sized jobs in the new year. I'm based In Edinburgh, hopefully there's one or two of you that are also.
Cheers
my advice would be - do the very best job you can do and be tidy, build up contacts and try not to let them down , keep competitive when working for builders/ developers and allways appear to have there best intrests at heart (even if you don't ;D) cause there are your main work supply , never burn bridges with customers be punctual and polite and honest , this has worked for me over the years , best of luck to you .
