What we do

Four trades, four units of sale, one certificate of insurance.

Decorating is priced by the day. Plastering, tiling and flooring are priced by the square metre. Almost every firm in this trade quotes in both and explains neither — so this page is the whole rate card, the preparation grades behind it, and the things we will always quote for separately.

Painting & decorating

Interiors and exteriors, sash windows stripped and rebuilt, kitchens sprayed off-site or in place, and wallcoverings from lining paper to heavy grades.

From £290 per person per day, labour only

Plastering

Re-skims, float and set to bare brick with browning or hardwall, dot-and-dab drylining, and lime plaster and render on the older solid-wall houses.

From £18 per m², re-skim

Wall & floor tiling

Bathrooms, wet rooms and kitchens. Tanked where the room needs it, fixed on a solid bed to BS 5385, back-buttered on large format, movement joints at the perimeters.

From £34 per m², labour

Floor laying

Engineered board, LVT and stair runners. Subfloor hygrometer-tested before anything is opened, boards acclimatised in the room, casings undercut rather than scribed round.

From £52 per m², supplied and fitted

The rate card

Everything, with the exclusions attached to it.

The exclusions are printed beside the prices rather than in a terms page, because a price that leaves out the preparation is not a price. Since April 2025 that is also the law: the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act makes revealing unavoidable costs late a matter for the Competition and Markets Authority.

All prices include VAT at 20%. Domestic work within 25 miles of Stamford. Held 30 days from survey. Reviewed 1 August 2026.
Work	Basis	Typical
Interior repaint, three-bed house	per job7–10 working days, two of us	£3,200–£4,800
Interior repaint, five-bed house	per job	£5,600–£7,400
One room, walls and ceiling	per roommaterials in	£420–£640
Exterior, semi-detached	per jobApril to September only	£2,400–£3,900
Sash window, stripped and rebuilt	eachthree coats over knotting and primer	£340–£520
Decorating labour	per person, per daylabour only	£290
Re-skim over sound plaster	per m²	£18–£24
Full re-plaster to brick	per m²browning or hardwall, then set	£32–£45
Lime plaster, solid wall	per m²three coat, haired	£58–£86
Wall tiling	per m²labour, solid bed to BS 5385	£34–£46
Floor tiling	per m²labour	£28–£40
Tanking to a wet room	per m²	£26–£38
Engineered board	per m²supplied and fitted	£52–£95
LVT	per m²supplied and fitted; herringbone at the top	£38–£68
Smoothing compound to subfloor	per m²where the survey calls for it	£9–£16

Inside every price

Two finish coats to walls and ceilings
Filling, caulking, sanding and stopping
Mist coat on any new plaster
Dust sheets, masking and floor protection
H-class extraction on all sanding
Waste removed under our carrier registration
VAT at 20%

Quoted separately, always

Making good blown or cracked plaster
Lead paint, and textured coatings pre-2000
Access above first-floor reach
Moving heavy furniture
Colour changes after the schedule is signed

Why the second list exists

None of it can be priced from a doorway. A blown patch behind a chimney breast is found by tapping, and a 1970s ceiling has to be tested before anyone touches it. Guessing at those on the phone is how a £3,000 job becomes a £5,000 argument.

The parts of the job with rules attached

Three things we are not allowed to guess at.

Two of these are health and safety law and one is a waste offence. All three get decided at the survey, in writing, before a price is given.

Pre-1980 houses

Lead paint

Lead was in domestic primers well into the late eighties on exterior joinery. Above one per cent it needs a risk assessment under the Control of Lead at Work Regulations 2002 — and it must never be dry-sanded or burnt off. We wet-abrade or use a low-temperature infrared plate, with H-class extraction.

Pre-2000 ceilings

Textured coatings

Artex and its imitators may contain chrysotile. We take a sample to a UKAS lab before anything is disturbed. If it is positive the answer is almost always to skim straight over it — encapsulating rather than removing needs no notification and releases nothing.

Every job

Where the waste goes

Old carpet, underlay, wallpaper strippings and tile rubble leaving your property in our van is upper-tier carrier activity, not lower. We are registered as CBDU‑214877 and you get the transfer note.

April to September

And one we will not bend

Exterior masonry and joinery need the substrate above 7°C, not the air — a north wall that sat at 4°C overnight will fail under a 9°C morning. We stop outside work at the end of September rather than take the booking.

Timing

How long things take, and when we can start them.

Working days on site, two of us. Drying times assume a warm, ventilated room.
Job	On site	Season	Waiting time
One room, walls and ceiling	1–2 days	Any	3–4 weeks
Hall, stairs and landing	3–4 days	Any	4–6 weeks
Three-bed interior repaint	7–10 days	Any, busiest Oct–Dec	6–8 weeks
Re-skim, one room	1 day, then 5–7 days drying	Any	4–5 weeks
Full re-plaster to brick	2–3 days, then 2–4 weeks drying	Avoid deep winter	6–8 weeks
Bathroom, tiled throughout	4–6 days	Any	5–7 weeks
Exterior, semi-detached	5–8 days	April–September only	Book by February

Asked most often

The questions that come up at every survey.

Is that a quote or an estimate?

A quote. Once you accept it, that is the price, and we cannot raise it. An estimate is only an indication — plenty of firms send one and let it drift. Anything we find later that genuinely was not visible at survey comes back to you as a separate written variation, agreed before we do it, never added to the final invoice as a surprise.

Why do you need to come and look?

Because suction, substrate and what is under the current coat decide about a third of the cost, and none of them can be seen down a phone. A survey takes about forty minutes, is free, and commits you to nothing. If you would rather start with photographs, send them — it will get you a bracket, not a price.

Do you want a deposit?

Not on anything under £3,000. Above that we ask for 10% on the day we start, which covers materials ordered in. Anyone asking a domestic customer for more than 25% up front should be asked why. We take card, which also means the job is covered by section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.

Can I supply my own paint?

Yes, and it makes no difference to the labour price. We will tell you honestly whether what you have bought will cover in two coats — a strong colour over white very often will not, and a third coat is a third of the finishing time again.

My last decorator used PVA on the new plaster and it peeled.

That is the single commonest failure we are called out to. PVA seals the surface so the emulsion sits on a film instead of keying into the plaster, and it comes away in sheets. New plaster wants a thinned mist coat and nothing else. Putting it right means scraping back to sound plaster, which is a making-good item.

How long before I can paint new plaster?

Five to seven days in a warm, ventilated room; two to four weeks if it is cold, or if the patch is thick. The test is visual and reliable — it is ready when the whole wall is a uniform pale colour with no darker patches anywhere.

Send us the room and we will send you a bracket.

Photographs and rough measurements are enough to get a range within two working days. The exact figure needs the survey.

Book a survey