i'm not normally one for burning bridges but it happened today. We do a bit for a property developer of the asian persuasion. in the last 6 months we've done 2 full house reskims and a couple of smaller jobs for him. hes my mates contact so i never deal with the money, just get my day rate off my mate. today we started a large dining room and kitchen was meant to be a basic strip walls and ceiling and skim and over skim kitchen around units. this was under the basis that the walls were sound once stripped even though i told him before hand you could tell they werent.
anyway. started stripping today. straight away huge chunks of wall were coming away. phoned him up. told him and he said carry on see how you get on. cut a long story short we got him around this afternoon because we werent happy. told him how long it was going to take and either we can do it on a price or day rate. he offered us £500. bearing in mind we had to take up carpets. sheet up. take off rads. take down lights. remove all skirts and architrave and bag up all the plaster. thats a day for 2 of us. then board it all. still had to strip the woodchip of the ceiling and blue grit it. also form an arch. then skim it all.
then in the kitchen theyd had a leak so some of the artex on the walls was just hanging there so it needed scraping off. pva'ing to seal any dust then a coat of blue grit over it all. told him this was touch and go but he was happy with it. patch in the ceiling where the leak came through. take down 3 units. an extractor, 2 flourescent lights, remove a rad. all whilst working in a tiny shitty space with no room to move.not to mention having to polythene the base units and floor. its probably 2 buckets of skim for the whole kitchen. but involves 10+ beads. around 2 windows and 3 doors.
basically he then offered us £700 but said hes not happy and for that price he wants it all spotless. perfect and a first class job. we worked it out to 7 man days so he wants to pay £100 a day and wants a perfect finish. not to mention he was holding back £300 off the last job. he gave my mate the owed dosh. i told him im not ******* doing it and im not grateful he was nice enough to offer me £100 a day. never has a day of not being paid felt so good.
moral of the story.... F'UCK 'EM
anyway. started stripping today. straight away huge chunks of wall were coming away. phoned him up. told him and he said carry on see how you get on. cut a long story short we got him around this afternoon because we werent happy. told him how long it was going to take and either we can do it on a price or day rate. he offered us £500. bearing in mind we had to take up carpets. sheet up. take off rads. take down lights. remove all skirts and architrave and bag up all the plaster. thats a day for 2 of us. then board it all. still had to strip the woodchip of the ceiling and blue grit it. also form an arch. then skim it all.
then in the kitchen theyd had a leak so some of the artex on the walls was just hanging there so it needed scraping off. pva'ing to seal any dust then a coat of blue grit over it all. told him this was touch and go but he was happy with it. patch in the ceiling where the leak came through. take down 3 units. an extractor, 2 flourescent lights, remove a rad. all whilst working in a tiny shitty space with no room to move.not to mention having to polythene the base units and floor. its probably 2 buckets of skim for the whole kitchen. but involves 10+ beads. around 2 windows and 3 doors.
basically he then offered us £700 but said hes not happy and for that price he wants it all spotless. perfect and a first class job. we worked it out to 7 man days so he wants to pay £100 a day and wants a perfect finish. not to mention he was holding back £300 off the last job. he gave my mate the owed dosh. i told him im not ******* doing it and im not grateful he was nice enough to offer me £100 a day. never has a day of not being paid felt so good.
moral of the story.... F'UCK 'EM