The power of 3...

Things have finally kicked off at the new house. Paper stripped from most of downstairs, just the ceilings left, as we've now had the damp issues addressed.

So far I've been using mybuilder.com to get quotes in for the works. Pretty good website if you haven't used it before. You post the job, location, and a description onto their website, then trades get in touch with you to offer to come to quote for the works. Saves a lot of the leg work.

So, for our house, we've got the standard terraced property issues. Damp to areas of both Party Walls, and some patches around the bay window & rear wall.

First, I shortlisted and invited to quote 2 damp specialists/ plasterers who had the best reviews. I had 3 in total asking to quote for the work.

First guy came around, local chap, really nice. Hack off 1.2m around walls, treat & re-plaster, but offered to plaster the whole of the ground floor also. Great, I thought, as we are looking to plaster the whole house anyway. Around £3k the quote came back at. Now, I didn't think that sounded too bad, but thought I'd better get a comparison.

Second guy, again, nice chap, knowledgeable, similar diagnosis, but said that we'd only need to treat some of the walls. In order to avoid the 1.2m high mark around the rooms, between old & new plaster, I asked if the whole walls which were being treated could be plastered to the ceiling too. No issues, around £1,600. Happy days!

In the back of my mind though I had this nibbling feeling, telling me to get a third price, just to make sure, so invited the third around to see the work.

Similar to the second guy, only the damp walls to be treated, little bits here and there. £1,000!!! It started at £600 actually, but we ended up adding an airbrick to the bay, and increasing spec in some areas. All in all, well happy with the work. Again, nice chap, only thing that I was unsure of was that he didn't have as many reviews on mybuilder, due to him only recently joining. I'm glad I took the plunge though.

The message here is get those 3 quotes. Don't be scared. Look at the difference to our costs it made! That saving will pay for the flooring for the whole of the ground floor! It was also great to get a little more in depth knowledge of the systems they used, and their interpretations of the scale of what was required. All in all, great little website/ app, and we'll be keeping hold of that tradesmen's number for our future projects!