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LongstrokePlastering

LongstrokePlastering

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Ok so i get a phone call last week off a distraught customer whos had and i qoute some cowboy plasterers in. Theyve had a new build krendered in a polar white finish. After a brief chat with them i dicide ill take the job on. On the drive up there am disscussing with the lads how bad itll be, how uneven it will be, how much ghosting has happened and if the panels are different colours lol, i was wrong. So we pull up and find a stunning grand design property, aprox 600m2 of krend what the customer is un happy with :-0 Wow this is ******* mint says the youngest lad, shhh dont let him here u say that i replyd. So me and the owner have a stroll round the property and hes showing me what hes unhappy with and am thinking to myself this customer is a perfectionist, what am i getting involved with? So am i itll be cool.
Imagine this 150m2 gable, lights shining on it, pebbles, stones, decking and cars everywere. Theres 3 little light misses where the plasterers have missed whilst rubbing up unfortunatley and he wants the full panel doing again. We walk to the back elervation and the reveals arnt square on his triangle contempoary windows with little gaps on the beads where the vibration of the scratch coat has nocked 3mm of krend of a angle bead that u need a magnifing glass to see. WE continue to the side elervation were there is another 150m2 gable with a spot ov ghosting 30ft high apox 6inch by 6inch that u need atelescope to see. Various other panels pointed out ect blah blah blah the job was mint by the plasterers who ever they were. The client says so lance ive seen your work, uve been recomended and uve got the job, at this point am thinking a- uve not got my price yet and b- do i even want this task at hand? c- How am i gona work this lot out and what if i miss a little bit lol. We enter the property and sit down to a foriegn tasting coffie disscusing ideas ect and wether to paint areas, hack of areas re apply base coat ect and now hes ringing wanting to know when i can start!!!
What do u think would be the best option? Krend paint areas? Apply backing coat and re render? Bear in mind theres corners everywere so whats the crack with the beads? Hack off, rebead, bead over the top, stop beads on the existing beads so i dont have to float round the corners and so on. Am thinking day rate for this slow application and price for the large panels, but then again sometimes manual labour isnt always perfect.
Heres a picture of what he hates coming home to every night-

Opinions welcolme? :RpS_wink:
 
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To begin with, instead of using the direct link in Photobucket, use the IMG link instead because this will show the images in the post without having to click to view them :)

Find out whether the guy paid for the work that has already been done before you consider your options :)
 
cheers minh, yes he paid them in full and decided to not to recomend him to his circle of friends. Heres the front and back of the property without the gables, so what do u think any suggestions?





 
If you redo it and its still not to his standards then he might not wanna pay again for another job he decides is not good enough.....IMO
 
Cant you acrylic over the top?

My advice is if you have that gut feeling just walk away
 
LongstrokePlastering said:
Wow this is ******* mint says the youngest lad,
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Hahaha funny as fook.

Tell me mate, are the defects bad or client be overly fussy ?.

Can you guarantee that the same wont happen again with something happening to the finish out of your control ?.

On the one hand i'm thinking if your busy, humbly decline.On the other, get on it, and show em how its done lol.

Good luck fella, and keep us updated to what you decide to do.
 
I would stay away from it, has he gave the "cowboys" a chance to put it right? It looks like a very nice pad he lives in, and I doubt he would just write-off £10k (im guessing) of work and move on to the next plasterer just like that.

He is the type of guy who has inspected every elevation after the plasterers have gone home that evening, (and rightly so, cos I would do the same if it was me parting with my cash) if theres a problem on each elevation A) why did he let them carry on messing his job up? and B) why did he pay them? Something not right here somewhere, Alarm bells ringing.

Unless you are hacking it all off again, dont even consider repairing or going over the existing render, cos as the last person to work on it, he will expect you to gaurantee the job.

You said yourself that they did a mint job, could you easily match that standard or even better it?

It takes years to build a good reputation and just a single job to ruin one, dont let it be this job!
 
I would try and stay clear from this job. Perfectionist's fill always find fault.

Life is too short to take on this hassle.
 
LongstrokePlastering said:
cheers minh, yes he paid them in full and decided to not to recomend him to his circle of friends. Heres the front and back of the property without the gables, so what do u think any suggestions?





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From what I gather, the original work was done to a very high standard but the guy is not entirely happy because there are areas that have slight imperfections. I'm not entirely convinced that he paid them in full because I am sure that the original guys would have tried to rectify those areas but he may have declined their offer because he wanted it to be completely redone. We have to consider than the repair option was not to his liking because it would not leave a seamless finish.

If you were to offer your services, you would be caught in a difficult situation because if it is does not entirely meet his expectations, your reputation would ultimately suffer. If you positively believe that he did pay the guys for the work, you should offer to redo the work but at a higher premium. Perfection comes at a price and you should be duly rewarded for the extra effort.

There is one last point to consider. He's a perfectionist and you will feel like a fish with a hook in its mouth: he's going to reel you in whenever the slightest problem occurs :)
 
Here's an analogy for you LongStroke, have you ever encountered perfectionist car owners? One small scrape and they won't settle for the panel to be resprayed and blended in because it will be noticeable from certain angles. Instead, they insist on having the whole car resprayed :)
 
Krend over Krend with silicone in and no suction ! ! colours will be different unless you do the whole lot.

can you go the acrylic route - bear in mind if its sunny/windy/rainy you could get the slightest of scars, colour wash, etc and that he will be straight onto, nothing looks worse.
 
If you have any other work on walk away. Id say the other plasterers had their heart broke with this man. Plus imagine how bad it will be now the house is finished and he's living there. Thats just my opinion.
 
Minh said:
Here's an analogy for you LongStroke, have you ever encountered perfectionist car owners? One small scrape and they won't settle for the panel to be resprayed and blended in because it will be noticeable from certain angles. Instead, they insist on having the whole car resprayed :)
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He is a plasterer, he never had an ology in school.
 
Personaly i think the first and most respectful thing that you should have said is that you believe the work to be of a high standard if this was the case or your unwitingly condeming the previous plasterers work unfairly from what your saying.

Once id have said that tbh i would have said that id be unwillingly to take the work on as it would seem an unreasonable and unatainable standard of work is expected

Definetly, definetly walk mate. This will only end in a puddle of tears!!!!

Zombie
 
zombie said:
Personaly i think the first and most respectful thing that you should have said is that you believe the work to be of a high standard if this was the case or your unwitingly condeming the previous plasterers work unfairly from what your saying.

Once id have said that tbh i would have said that id be unwillingly to take the work on as it would seem an unreasonable and unatainable standard of work is expected


Definetly, definetly walk mate. This will only end in a puddle of tears!!!!

Zombie
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Got to agree with you there!

You've already stated its a good job, if you're convinced you can surpass the previous standard - fine, go for it - just be wary of the pitfalls afterwards!
 
Are you a perfectionist too? If not I'd stay away. 1mm thin coat or paint all the way on this. Hacking off is too much to solve what sounds like a blemish problem. Biggest fiddle would be keeping your margins spotless with all the dark windows and sandstone everywhere. If your not a keen masker I'd decline as this task alone is finicky enough. The other plasterers must have been quite beaten by the end.
For a precious client doesnt he realise it'll look turd in 5 years and need painting anyway through staining? Id have more of an isssue with the 6 year old essex architect for penning such a footballers wives monstrosity. Nothing grand designs about his sprawl, just tasteless wankery. The krend and the mish mash of window styles are a crime against design!
Anyway, he should really have sourced perfectionist plasterers and ensured the project manager was cracking the whip if he can't sleep at night because his socks aren't ironed.
 
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Alarm bells, sirens and the full three minute warning..
Had customers like this before.. I bet he has white leather sofas..

Deffo walk away.
 
Only way to approach it if you WERE to take it on would be to flood it with good reliable men, price it high and have absolute watertight T &C's and stick rigidly to them - he'll expect nothing less anyhow :RpS_thumbup:
 
I no i no i no, (sigh) not in to walking away but its looking that way. I belive i could get it better but u know urself, 1 mistake on a panel and bang hell be right on my case.
Can i have abit off info on these acrylics lads? cheers for the comments.
 
its a modern render with some blemishes that's best solved with a modern render. the jobs more akin to finicky decorating than render to put it right. So if that's not your thing I'd move on or get someone mint in to do a thin coat and shadow them(if they'll touch it).
 
I wouldn,t even consider bucket coat for this client. Walk away.

I had a perfectionist 3 years ago and took on the challenge. We was quite proud of what we had done and thought he could not possibly find fault.

Well he did! I shi t you not on the stop bead he found a blemish where if you tried hard you might just fit 3 particles of 1.5mm grit (it was Weber TF150) but that was pushing it two particle perhaps. This was on the back and 5m up! He did say he would live with it as you cannot see it in the garden but thought I should know for future jobs I take on.

I had another perfectionist in the 90.s where I did a 6mm limestone dash job and he wanting to show me a spot what I had missed. He could,t find it so brought his wife out to help him point it out. If you could have got 2 x 6mm pebbles in you was lucky and thats what he had me do.

These people live on a different planet to us. If they was a clerk of works on a housing site they would get the sack for costing their employers to much in mistakes.
 
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