The wall under the paint.
Plastering and gib stopping across Christchurch. We fill the cracks, holes, tired joins and water damage, sand it all back flat and leave the paint a surface to sit on instead of something to point at.
- Owner operated
- Christchurch
- Part of the Parthenon family
Paint hides nothing.
Stand in a room you are unhappy with and what is bothering you is almost never the colour. It is the line above the door, the ripple across the ceiling, the patch by the light switch.
Paint is about forty microns thick, thinner than a sheet of paper. Every flaw in a finished room was in the wall before the painting started, and a fresh coat does not soften it, it lights it.
A crack along a join is the case people arrive with. Scraping filler into it leaves the join underneath doing what it was doing before, which is why it came back in the same place. We open it up, re-tape so the two sheets are tied together, and build the coats out wide enough to sit flat.
Which is why plastering is not the step before the real job. It is usually the larger half, and the part you cannot check afterwards: once the paint is on, a filled crack and a painted-over crack look identical for a year or two. So we find everything first, with a hand and a light.
What paint is
About forty microns of it
What fresh paint does
More even, so it shows more
What fixes a join
Re-taped, never just filled
When it gets found
We find it before the first coat
Four jobs, all called plastering.
They want different products, drying times and amounts of sanding.
Movement cracks
Where a house settlesAlong the joins, and out of the top corners of doors and windows, the commonest fault in a Christchurch house. We open them up and re-tape where the join has let go.
Holes and dents
Doors and shelvingThe handle through the wall, the shelf that came off with the lining attached, the twenty screw holes from a mount that moved. Small holes we fill; anything bigger gets a patch cut in, because filler with nothing behind it is a lid rather than a repair.
Old gib joins
Sheet to sheetJoins stopped narrow, sanded hard, or done in one coat instead of three. They show as a ridge or a hollow in raking light, and they are the commonest reason a good paint job still reads as tired.
Wet or stripped
Leaks, and old paperLining that has been saturated does not come back by drying, so we cut it out to sound board. A wall stripped of paper that has lost its face wants skimming, not spot filling.
Nothing to photograph.
Which is the whole pointA plastered wall that is right looks like a wall. There is no before and after worth putting on a page, because the finished article is an absence: the only way anybody sees the work is by putting a light across it and finding nothing. That is the standard, and it is checked that way before any paint goes on.
What happens on the visitHow flat is flat enough?
Almost nobody is asked this before they get a price. The level of finish a wall is taken to is a decision, it costs different amounts, and it is the biggest reason two plastering quotes disagree.
The common domestic standard is what most people mean by a properly stopped wall: joins and fixings covered and sanded flush, flat under normal light, ready for paint. It is what our quote assumes unless we say otherwise.
The step above is a skim across the whole surface, so the wall is one material instead of board with strips of plaster across it. It is for where the ordinary standard will not survive: low light along a wall, a dark or gloss finish, a long unbroken ceiling. It costs more and adds drying time.
Under both sits the level a garage or a wardrobe gets, where the joins are covered and nobody sands them to a finish.
The right answer changes room by room, so we tell you which wall goes to which standard and why, and you get to disagree.
The usual standard
The one nobody ever asks for by name
The step above
Worth paying for on maybe two walls in a house
What it costs you
More drying, and more sanding
What our quote says
We name which wall gets which, and why
Most of plastering is waiting.
A stopped join is three coats with a dry between each, and the drying is not padding in the schedule. It is why the repair is still flat in five years.
The first coat does the structural work. We tape the join and bed the tape into compound, which ties the two sheets together so movement is shared rather than concentrated in a line.
Then it has to dry. Compound shrinks as the water leaves it, and a second coat over a damp first shrinks twice, leaving a hollow you will see for the life of the paint. Overnight in a warm room; longer in a cold Christchurch July, and we plan around that rather than talking it shorter.
The second coat goes on wider than the first and the third wider again. That is the trick of an invisible join: not filling a groove, but building a ramp broad enough that your eye cannot find its edges. Feathered over three hundred millimetres it disappears. Over eighty it is a stripe.
Then the sanding, which decides whether it is a good job, done with a light against the wall rather than by feel.
One
We tape it, and nothing above it can fix this coat
Two
We let it dry before anything goes over it
Three
Wider, then wider again, into a shallow ramp
Four
We sand it to a light, never to a hand
Last
We seal it, so it does not drink the paint
A builder saw it before the paint.
Daniel Fridd runs Parthenon Construction. Plastering is the half of the work that vanishes when it is right, so the useful witness is one who has been in the room with the walls still open.
“He's one of the best painters I've seen. Perfection. Takes proper care.”
Daniel Fridd, Parthenon Construction
What people ask about plastering.
Eight answers, and the second one is why the job has more days in it than hours of work.
Can you fill it and leave it at that?
Sometimes. A dent, a screw hole or a chip in a sound wall is a fill and a sand. A crack along a join is not, because the join is still moving and the filler is the first thing to give.
Why does it take so many days?
Because a join is three coats and each has to dry before the next. Most of the time is the wall drying rather than anybody working in your house, and the number of days depends on the room and the season. You get them at the quote rather than off a page.
How much dust is there?
Sanding plaster makes a fine dust that travels further than you expect. We seal the doorways, cover the floors, and vacuum sand where the room allows. It is still the messiest part of a painting job.
What has to come off the walls?
Everything, fixings included: picture hooks, shelf brackets, curtain hardware. Faster and tidier to take them out and make the holes good than to work around them.
Can I stay in the house?
Usually yes, one or two rooms at a time. The room being sanded is not usable that day, so we tell you in advance which day it falls on. That is the day to be out if you can be.
Will I be able to see the repair?
Not in normal light, if it has been built out wide enough and sanded to a light. Under a low sun you may find it if you know where to look. If a wall takes that light all day, the fix is to skim it rather than sand harder.
Do you do gib stopping on new work?
Yes. Whole houses of it, or one room where a wall has been opened up. Same three coats and the same waiting, with the advantage that nobody is trying to live in the room.
Is it quoted separately from the painting?
We itemise it separately. Two rooms the same size can be a morning or several days apart depending on what is in the walls, and itemising is what lets you compare one quote with another.
Plastering almost never arrives alone.
Worth quoting the whole sequence rather than the middle of it.
Interior Painting
What comes nextThe coats that go on once the surface is flat, sealed and ready. Almost every plastering job on a lived-in house is the first half of this one.
Wallpapering
Off, and back onStripping paper is the commonest way a wall ends up wanting a skim rather than a spot repair, and papering over one that is not flat lights every ridge under it.
Residential Painting
The whole house at onceWhen it is more than one room the plastering sets the order of everything else, so the drying is built into the programme rather than discovered halfway through.
Commercial Painting
And property managersTenancy make-goods, where the filling and the painting have to happen inside the same short window.
Bring a light, and we will look together.
Every repaint quote rests on an assumption about the walls. Ten minutes with a lamp against yours turns it into a list: what is there, which cracks matter, and what any of it costs. Worth doing before you have chosen a colour.
- 022 615 5816
Bevan, direct
- bevan@prd.kiwi
Email
Christchurch
Where we work