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melon

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hi lads, been working on a bungalow over the last week or so,
whilst working today a brickie thats building a garage for the customer said to me " im suprised your lot can manage,most builders do their own plastering nowdays"
i laughed it off and had a bit of banter and said maybe patching in,he says na m8 we do all ours even big areas
any truth in what he says? just wondering what ya think? iv got a few builders i work for and they leave me to get on with it.? is it time i did a brickwork course to diversify to compete with future competition?
 
melon said:
hi lads, been working on a bungalow over the last week or so,
whilst working today a brickie thats building a garage for the customer said to me " im suprised your lot can manage,most builders do their own plastering nowdays"
i laughed it off and had a bit of banter and said maybe patching in,he says na m8 we do all ours even big areas
any truth in what he says? just wondering what ya think? iv got a few builders i work for and they leave me to get on with it.? is it time i did a brickwork course to diversify to compete with future competition?
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yes and no mate....

I would say that 20% will do and will do a decent enough job though not a1
50% will do there own boardworkd and prep but pay for wet works
30% sub the rest out

imo 70% of builders are pricks, full of shite and jack of all trades master of none.
30% are good know there strengths and weaknesses and sub accordingly.

But in short to answer your questions you don't need to plaster for builders to plaster full time. Commercial work, New builds and domestic work has fook all to do with plastering for a builder!:RpS_thumbup:

ps I fookin hate most that I know!!!:RpS_cursing:
 
Most builders we've had work for us (personal domestic, family business) have been cowboys who think they know more than they do.

Surprised if that has changed. I remember seeing one forum member say that they were on the way to price a ceiling and the roofer said he'd do it just as the bloke arrived, and for £50 no less. So no doubt the state of that ceiling.
 
I've been thinking that myself so many companies now do it all complete bathroom renovations etc I did do C&G plumbing just the theory so maybe wanna do more practical side saying that I did email one of the companies the geezer said he don't do the plumbing but just project manages and does plastering,tiling and decoration
 
The builders I know who've done their own plastering have been dog rough. last one we were going to do was boarded by the builder and he had more drywall on the board than sticking it on. Reveals were out by an inch at the least and he hadn't even put any flooring down. there were huge gaps between the boards on the ceiling a well. We just walked off and told him to stuff it. never done anything for him since.

Another builder we knew had three standards of work, rough, rougher and roughest - he wasn't bullshítting either!
 
all the builders i do work for all agree its the one trade they would never do their self's and would always pay for a professional job, most of the builders i work for thought are the old school type who dont do any work themselves but just run the job and get trades in
 
You should have said to him melon,
"That's funny because I built my own house, not as if it's difficult to do eh?!" :RpS_cool:
 
my builder mate does a lot of his now... well when I can be bothered to do it :D

Multi Trades are common now....lol
 
Just done my bathroom and counted I did ten trades doing it, god knows how you would get all them trades in getting three quotes off each it would take forever which my missus would say this has lol. And reading back it isn't actually done yet but nearly :) so getting a builder in who has ten good tradesmen is also a difficult task the good thing about plastering is you can hide most of the trades work so can do it yourself :)
 
I plastered a bathroom they were getting a tiler in for small bathroom £500 am I in the wrong trade, looked into it I know basic tiling but there don't seem to be any courses in tiling alone reckon that's a skill looking at some of the bespoke jobs I've seen.
 
A builder I do bits for started doing his own, only the walls which are horrendous quality. He asks me to do his ceilings. So I charge him way over the odds now and make his work look **** aswel
 
theres many plasterers in my area that cant plaster , seeing more and more of there work , and as its only skimming its pretty crap . I know a brickie tht has just had his loft converted , ( he asked me but i couldnt fit it in ) straight forward job with rolled ceilings , the lad how done it (15 years in the trade ) made a right mess , charged £100 cash and told the brickie " it might need some sanding down in places " wtf , brickies mrs dont want the lad back to do the HSL , AND YES ive got the call to do it , becoming more and more of a joke trade .
 
It's annoying when you see a builders van listing all the trades down the side, I can just imagine a bunch of blokes crammed in the back saying 'can we come out now, it smells in here..'
 
Specialist in joinery, plastering, roofing etc etc, laughable because it's a contradicting statement. If there doing there own plastering there jobbing builders. A clever builder get someone else to do everything, and runs the job organising trades and materials and sticks there 10% on everyone's figures.
 
brickies and builders never believe there walls are 20-30 mm out top to bottom , and if it gets covered by them no one will ever know until householders pictures wont hang flat, skimming isn't hard to make passable if your the boss, dot and dab isn't difficult and sandpaper works wonders before paint, sad state of affairs but its cheaper for them to do themselves . money over quality !!
 
As @zombie and others have said, the majority of builders will 'have a go' at most things. The minority will stick within their limits and get people in. A very small percentage nowadays do the 'organise and contract everything out' approach.

For me it's about quality work as I can't won't get involved in a race to the bottom by always aiming to be cheaper. There are too many out there with their £20:00 a day labourers using the cheapest shite materials they can get hold of. I will compete on quality and standard of work with anyone. The only way I can do that is to use quality materials and skilled people.

So for me, my limit for plastering is the likes of a window reveal where a plasterer wouldn't want to come out for such a small job. For tiling I'll do a splashback or window cill, any more than that and I get a tiler to do it. Brick laying I'll brick up a doorway/window, anything more and I get a brick layer.

It's common sense really, I wouldn't ask the bloke in the chippy to do my tax return and expect it to be bang on.

The other thing to remember is that it isn't just plastering which gets swamped with chancers. Some customers just look at the bottom line, and some take a moment to consider who they should trust the work to. I never mind loosing work because the customer has chosen the cheapest quote, those are the sort of fools I can do without.

So @melon saying 'most builders' whilst probably true doesn't tell the full story as you're talking about the 'throw it up and walk away' end of the market in the same way as referring to the 'slap it on and run' end of the plastering market. In both cases that type of work and those type of people are best avoided.
 
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Most builders I know sub it all out, but there decent concerns and not just a chimp working out the back of a ten year old van,depends on the builder your working for I guess. We mainly work on one off builds for developers/builders, everything is subbed out.
 
Almost every builder in our area does their own . Ive only came across one who I now work with quite a bit who is actually very competent on the trowel. But there is another who swears by PVAing new blockwork and then putting a 2sand -1cement render mix on it lol and saying its been on for 25plus years. Alot of them only do a plasterboarded wall here or a bit of render patching there. But once a bit of Krend or insulated render system comes up they call a plasterer in incase they **** it up cos alot of ours are old school. One of the brickie bosses tells me back wen he served his time the builders just did all there own plastering and wen the big firm folded they all set up on there own and continued doing it
 
Yeah it's a bit like web developers becoming spreads think they know it all.

But the worst is spreads who think they can become seo's or web developers, I mean come on that's impossible right.

High Danny just a bit of sarcasm from one WHO CAN do many trades and do a better job of it than most
 
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