Expecting too much from newly skimmed walls?

We've just had our downstairs living room, dining room, hall, stairwell, landing and one bedroom re-skimmed.

I'd already had a chance to see the work of the guys that did the plastering before we hired them, the price was good (maybe a bit too cheap?) so I felt confident enough. They were both pretty experienced.

Generally, I'm happy with the end result downstairs however I'm a bit disappointed with the upstairs.

The bedroom ceiling was lathe and plaster and part of it had come loose when we had a new loft hatch fitted. They removed the worst of the loose bits and replaced with plasterboard, then overboarded the whole lot, screwed into the joists. The landing and stairwell was awkward, admittedly - a very high ceiling over the stairwell, artex to skim over and architraves to work around.

Unlike downstairs, which seemed mostly perfect and looks good after painting the mist coat (using the Screwfix bare plaster paint), there seems to be a few issues upstairs:

* In some places the walls feel really smooth, flat and level but in some places there are noticeable bumps or ripples when running my hand over them (but not visible to the naked eye although maybe they will be when painted, which is my fear). In some places there are smaller, more noticeable ripples that are visible.
* The finish around some of the corners seems really rough, texture wise. The edges are all beaded and straight, it just feels quite coarse when rubbing my hand over it and feels like it will need sanding.
* There are a few nicks and spots that look like they will need filling.
* There are a few visible patches of scrim tape.
* The skim seems quite thin in places.
* In the landing, we had a patch of lath and plaster ceiling over one doorway that had sagged - part of the job that I had requested was that this was rectified and I was left with a straight ceiling line. The loose plaster has been completely cut out and patched using plasterboard however the end result, whilst better, still has a noticeable drop (to me anyway). I had explicitly said I wanted it to be straight.
* Compared to downstairs, upstairs seemed a bit messy, almost like they were a bit rushed - some of the walls that had been done a few days before had some very obvious drips of PVA that had run down them which I now need to get off. Lots of plaster over skirting and architraves (they were going to be decorated but still annoying).

To be fair to them, they responded well enough to my initial email and said they want me to be happy with the finished job and will look at these issues when they return next week (they had some rubbish to collect and were going to price up some more work). Annoyingly I've already paid them (my fault for not more thoroughly inspecting the work before paying) but it does sound like they are willing to fix things, but how much should I expect?

Its a 1930s house with a lot of original plaster. In an ideal world with lots of money, maybe you'd strip it all back and re-plaster from scratch but we could only afford to have it re-skimmed. Despite that, should I still be expecting perfectly flat, level walls with no visible *or* feel-able bumpiness? Or is the only way to get a perfectly flat wall to strip back?

I'll try and upload some photos.

 

OK, appreciate its hard to tell completely from photos but here's some. Sorry if they are a bit dark.

Here's the stairs and landing:



Here's the ceiling that was repaired - the drop, whilst much better than before, is still visible to me:



Bedroom - really have no idea what is going on with that pattern behind where the radiator was. There was some remnants of old wallpaper which I'm sure most of which had been scraped off and I know they PVA'd the walls:



It feels mostly OK but there are a few small slight cracks, including this one where a small area (about the size of a 50p piece) feels and sounds blown to me:



Some of those ripples:



Visible tape:

 

For some reason some of those have come out the wrong way up. Don't know why!

 

A few more.

Around architrave. Now, there was some really badly filled in chases on this wall which were higher than the rest of the wall - I assumed this would be hidden by the skim but if it was too high for this I would have assumed they would have chiselled it out carefully first? Also not sure what went wrong around this corner.





Rough work around reveal of window - this was actually quite smooth when they did it, but when they did the wall around the window it ended up like this afterwards.



Some small holes to fill:



Like I said, they seem like they want to make sure its all right and have already said they will take care of any visible scrim and do any filling if necessary but it seems like it shouldn't have been necessary. Downstairs was good so maybe they really were having an off day or just rushing a bit. I wasn't around, my wife said they sounded like they were struggling with the high stairs ceiling and having difficulty getting their tools into some bits (between some of the door frames is really rough and bumpy).

If they rectify the worst bits that's fine, but what about the bumpiness/undulation in places? If this is a normal result for skimming over an old wall then so be it; maybe I was expecting too much.

As for the part of the ceiling that's still not straight, I almost want them to cut it out and do it again. It might be an improvement but the reason I wanted it fixing is because I wanted a straight ceiling line and I haven't got one.

 

Why have all my photos come out upside down?

 

The photos are all the right way round on my computer, strangely!

The original job was: skim lounge/dining room and hallway walls, including straightening out some really wonky corners and bonding where backing plaster had come away (mainly around the bottom of the wall and where we'd had some electrical chases cut), skim landing walls and Artex ceiling including repairing sagged lathe and plaster in one area, and skim walls and Artex ceiling in my daughter's bedroom.

Total cost was £1210 and it took 2 of them working over 6 days but that wasn't full days - they left early most days except the last one which was doing the landing and clearing up. Probably closer to 4 full days. The additional work not originally quoted for was one extra wall in the landing and boarding over the bedroom ceiling which they charged an additional £190 for including materials. They also put on a some coving on one wall for me.

I wasn't around when they did the landing, but I know that they knocked off all blown and loose plaster in the bedroom and also put on quite a lot of bonding in some of the really uneven areas, particularly around the window, before skimming. A large part of the wall came away above the window when a timber baton was removed which they made good with bonding and plasterboard.

Part of me almost suspects that one of them is better than the other, which would possibly explain why some walls are nigh on perfect with barely any ripple or bump to be felt and feels really smooth whilst others are a bit more uneven.

As I said though, I think the overall job downstairs was really good. We had a really uneven dividing wall between our lounge/dining room which was all over the place. They hacked half of it back to brick, beaded it and levelled it all up and its almost perfect. I counted on one hand a few tiny bits that needed some filling after the first mist coat and its a big room.

 

Yes, about 5 in the end I think. They were the cheapest, which would have normally put me off if I hadn't seen their work (they were working up the road and invited me to come and look).

Next cheapest was £1500 but guy seemed like a cowboy; the average was probably around £1800. I did have some over £2k which seemed excessive to me.

The guys that I chose seem to have only more recently started doing domestic work, from what I can tell - very experienced, the older guy said he'd been doing it for 35 years, but he was telling me they used to do big contract work, restaurants, nightclubs etc. but had grown tired of working away from home. So perhaps lower cost explained by lack of experience pricing up domestic work? I don't know.

 

Assuming above was sarcastic, but in this case the decorator will be me, mostly! Although should be getting in a pro to do the stairwell.

 

Thanks for the reply. They do seem reasonable and want to make sure we are happy so I will see what they say on Monday.

I certainly am planning to sort those architraves out. I'm actually just waiting on some lead paint testers in the post before I start sanding away. To be honest it looks like the paint will scrape off easily. As I said I'd rather have removed them but didn't want to risk too much damage to the lathe and plaster wall.

I will see what they say about the ceiling line. My wife says she can't even see it but I have an eye for these things.

Downstairs came out pretty good after just one cost of the screwfix bare plaster paint - no watering down needed and very high opacity. A bit patchy but not bad. The plasterers recommended a second coat - is it necessary to use the bare plaster paint again or could use any half decent contract matt for this? We went through the bare plaster paint quite quickly.

Also we did find a few strange spots where the paint just wouldn't stick and just slid off as we put it on. Any ideas why? Some of these spots were no bigger than a 50p piece. PVA splashes? Over polished spots? Would a light sand sort this out?

As a novice painter, any tips on getting the best roller finish? I'm using some decent Hamilton medium pile rollers. How much texture should the final finish have? Thanks!

 

Just to say, the plasterers returned this morning. They explained they may have missed some imperfections as the light was so poor when they were working and they had planned to do some snagging anyway, but they are now filling and sanding all the bits that need it without any fuss.

So...maybe should have been better in the first place but they are making good without any argument and I am happy with the majority of the rest of it. They'd already been paid so could have just buggered off but haven't so I am happy for them to do the other work we needed.

Regarding the uneven ceiling line, they said they did the best they could and cut out quite a bit of the loose lathe and plaster but the actual roof line itself was slightly uneven - it's right where a front extension has been added and the internal wall there is a stud partition and it wasn't built very well.

I will just have to with it. It's still a vast improvement I guess.

 

We did a second coat in the dining room last night; we just used the bare plaster paint again as I already had it and it went on fine. I lightly sanded the whole wall first with 120 grit and did some small spots of filling. The paint didn't seem to be covering as it went on but dried to a very nice finish; it looks much better.

Being new to this, I'm not sure how *smooth* a finish we should be aiming for. The first coat we used a medium pile roller and I thought the finish looked ok but it didn't feel smooth to the hand. After I'd sanded it was smooth everywhere but I'm wondering if this level of smoothness for a painted finish is unrealistic. We used a short pile for the second coat and I'd say the finish is pretty good; not orange peely and pretty smooth but you can still feel a very fine texture to it compared to the bare plaster - but I guess that's normal? You can't see any roller marks from a distance (unlike some of the other walls in the house that have been painted really badly) and even up close the texture is very very fine.