With over fifty years of working in the Plastering Trade from day one apprentice through to Freedom of the City of London and a Life Time Achievement Award, you would think that my plastering life was one of being the Perfect Plasterer, but you could not be more wrong
“You are a cowboy and you will never make a plasterer as long as you live”
“You are a cowboy and you will never make a plasterer as long as you live“
These are the words no one wants to hear especially a cock sure young twenty-one-year-old lad, but they are the exact words I heard as I was sacked from my first job as a plasterer LOL
Among other names people often refer to me as ‘the old school plasterer’ I think this means brought up through the hard school of knocks, the building sites in the early 1970’s were like the wild west, health and safety did not exist, no such thing as job security, and it was a case of survival of the fittest.
Out on The Black
I was offered some price work on a new build in Greater Manchester by a firm from the same area, they were paying 50p per metre for plaster boarding, £1 per metre for skimming the plasterboards , and £1.75 for floating and setting the solid walls, these prices included you fixing all the floating and skim beads, plus loading the houses yourself.
The Day I Ruined a Hotel Room: A Plasterer’s Tale
So you might have had a bad day at work, not everything has gone your way, or you are having your lunch sitting in a cold van eating chips out of a paper and hoping the afternoon is going to be better than the morning, welcome to my world.
Fluffy Dogs with Pink Heads
The year 2000 was filled with excitement and anticipation about what the new millennium would bring. That summer, Robbie Williams’ “Rock DJ” was playing on every pub jukebox, the perfect soundtrack to a cold pint in the sun.
Quick grab a bit of silicone out of the van
It was the middle of the nineties, I was working for a timber preservation company, my job role included, working with the preservation guys killing dry rot, the company had some very good contracts which included working on many large houses along with working for the Lords and Ladies of this land, they also had contacts with the Catholic church.
Lath and Plaster 