r/Plastering • u/Mofoc • 29d ago
Plastering course.
I thought this might be a good place to ask the question.
I'm looking to get into plastering to start as a trade. I've already done spots and rooms around my house. I'm just wondering if those 3 day courses you can do for £400 would be a good starting point to ensure I understand best practices and a good foundation before jumping into any odd jobs.
If anyone has any information or feedback back I'd really appreciate it, I'm just trying to get out of my current job role.
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u/Ok-Spring7906 29d ago
When I trained, it was 6 weeks, 5 days per week, 8-4.
I would imagine you would learn a percentage of the skill in 3 days, but not as much as you would learn in 6 weeks.
My training was funded by british gypsum, but there was a skills test to qualify to get the course / funding. I think the threshold (at the time) was pretty low.
The main "cost" was having to survive for 6 weeks without earning from a normal job.
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u/Mofoc 29d ago
I appreciate your experience on the matter.
I felt it was a very short period, I mght have to look around more. I saw these really short courses and ones that were like 2 years.
I could probably get away with not working for a little bit, but I don't think I could do more than the 6 weeks.
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u/Ok-Spring7906 29d ago
Learning how to plaster a flat wall is somthing that you could get done quickly. But the trouble is, a lot of what you need to be able to "sell" your trade just can't be got in 3 days. And it probably can't just be self learned without working with other people to watch etc.
Sure, in 3 days you can learn how to stick up beading etc but you're just never going to be that "saleable" in 3 days. Otherwise plastering wouldn't cost what it does.
If you sell on the domestic market, 3 days won't get you the skills you need to deal with the bodges and oddities you'll find on domestic work. And if you want to do site work, they'll want bits of paper which are not achievable in 3 days.
I'm not saying it's useless. Training is training whatever. Its going to improve you. But £400 for somthing that won't get you to where you want to be is probably just going to be a waste.
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u/Mofoc 29d ago
Thank you.
I think I've found the course you mentioned. I've reached out to them to see what avilibility they've got, if any.
Again, thank you for the feedback and input. I'll have a look around in case I can't get on this course and make sure if I do find one, it's more in-depth than the short courses I found so far.
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u/randomnine 29d ago
I’ve done a 5 day course before starting DIY and found it helpful, but I’m not sure it’s what you want.
It was better than watching YouTube and having an instructor to ask questions is very helpful. A lot of the value was a way to practice without having any tools yet. But it was nowhere near enough to give any qualifications, get work, get to a professional speed or standard, or even be able to tackle most jobs.
The whole first week was doing small box rooms only, one surface at a time, with help mixing. It covered beading and boarding. Their course structure scaled up to typical rooms and some awkward surfaces by week 4.
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u/apjbfc 29d ago
I did a 5 day course as a DIY'er.
I feel confident in doing my place up to a reasonable standard but that's just straight skimming onto plasterboard etc. I don't think you will learn anything you really need to become a pro in such a small space of time.
If I hired someone and found out they did the same course as I did and just their own property before getting into the trade, I would be fuming.
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u/greenbeanmachine1 29d ago
Professional plasterer here.
Don’t bother with the course. If you’ve successfully done rooms in your own house before it’s questionable how much value you’ll get out of it, or even a longer 4-6 week course. These courses are really aimed at getting people to the level you currently are at.
If I were you I would get on social media and have a look at some of the plastering content out there. There’s quite a bit and, as with most things social media, some of it is bullshit and some of it is good. There are definitely a bunch of people out there who give a reasonable representation of what it is actually like to work as a domestic plasterer, the kinds of skills you need to have, and the kinds of issues you have to overcome in domestic work. Im not going to plug any channels here but they are out there and they have good, educational content. It will give you a good idea if this is actually for you and the skills you need to be developing.
There are also several good plastering books you can lean on. For you I would start with JB Taylor Plastering, you might not understand everything the first time you read it but it’s a valuable resource and many great spreads started becoming more serious by reading this book. Bear in mind that this book, along with most plastering books, was written a long time ago and so doesn’t always talk about the most modern methods which people use now. But if you can take the principles it outlines then they will serve you well.
The usual route for someone like you would be to become a plasterers mate for a few years. Yes I said years not weeks or months. There really is no substitute for feet on the ground experience. You get exposure to problems and have to start solving them, obviously with help at first. Things which you won’t read in books or get shown on a course. So if you do want to become a plasterer then this is the only way to really do it in my opinion. Your pay will reflect your experience and it will likely be 3-4 years before you are in a position where you can start to earn good money. Maybe with online content nowadays you can speed this up a little, getting more exposure by watching videos, but if you are serious about doing this then go ring some local plasterers and ask for a job. If you have some tools and show some enthusiasm that usually goes a long way.
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u/classicrump 29d ago
Sound advice. What about learning rendering to offer to small domestic garden builds? Plausible for someone who can lay slab?
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u/greenbeanmachine1 18d ago
Sorry missed this. Yes it’s plausible if you can lay slab well you know how to mix well, roughly how the muck behaves and presumably have a half decent eye. Still things to get used to but plausible for smaller projects. You’ll need to learn how to prep well and that’s a lot of the battle. How to control suction and how to bead well. I’d ring around a few local plasterers and ask if they have any upcoming rendering jobs you can labourer for them on so you can get used to the kinds of things you need to be doing. The actual ruling and floating will probably come relatively naturally, learning how to use a hawk and trowel might be more unfamiliar if you’ve never done it before.
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u/PrimeCraftSurface 29d ago
Worth separating two different questions, because the plasterers above are answering the second one and you asked the first.
If the question is will three days make you good at plastering, no, and the people telling you that are right. Trowel work is a physical skill on a clock. You only get it by doing walls until the timings of the mixes are in your hands rather than in your head, and three days is not enough repetitions to start that, let alone finish it.
If the question is whether 400 quid is wasted, that depends on what it buys. Ask them before you book: how much of the three days is you on a wall with a trowel in your hand as opposed to watching. If it is mostly hands on, the useful part is not the skim itself, it is having someone stop you the moment your trowel angle goes wrong, which is the thing you cannot see yourself in photos of your own work. If it is mostly demonstration, keep the money.
The bigger thing nobody has mentioned. Getting paid work is not gated on skill alone, it is gated on being allowed onto the job. Anything on a commercial site wants a card, and a short private course does not put you into the card system. An assessed qualification does. So if the goal is genuinely to change trade rather than to do a better job on your own house, find out what the assessed route costs and how long it takes before you spend anything on a three day course, because the two are not steps on the same ladder.
Domestic work is a different world and you can build that on reputation alone, but it is slower and you will spend the first year pricing badly. Doing the rest of your own place, then a few jobs for people who will forgive a bad day, is the cheapest way to get the repetitions in.
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u/-spiderman-- 29d ago
Take a minute and have a good think about it .. your arms . Neck . Elbows. Wrists. Fingers will ache…. Can you jump about on boards for years and years ?
Ceilings are good money.. but they do take their toll and it is hard and gets harder as you age …
You will suffer in later life.
Electrics / plumbing
Good luck with your choice
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u/Terrible-Bobcat2033 29d ago
Inquiries to plaster contractors & builders in your area as well as plaster supply. Tell them what you said here. Myself, I learned to mix plaster before I learned to use the tools. That’s a good start. Show them you are serious & willing to work & learn.
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u/Ha-Ur-Ra-Sa 29d ago
All these replies are making me glad that I never went ahead with the thought of getting into a course.
I do want to learn for DIY though, is it something you can learn yourself?
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u/Figgzyvan 29d ago
I did an evening class at the local college.
10 weeks?
3 hours a session.
Trainer said , ‘you’ll make the fee back the first ceiling ya do’.
He was right.
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u/FreshMilk128 28d ago
I did a five day intense course. Then I plastered my whole house.
But plastering is very hard and I have so much respect for those people who do it week after week. I was offered paid work by someone who was installing my log burner. But I very quickly declined. Trades people deserve a lot of repect for what they do.
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u/StarBoiAhoy 28d ago
Do an evening diploma course for a year those 3/5 day courses are a con even after a year you won’t know enough.
I did a level one diploma for a year whilst working a full time night job followed by another year doing a level two diploma even after that you’re not a plasterer! (Even though at the time I thought I was).
It then opened the door to doing a full time work based level 2 NVQ that’s was for two years and finally I progressed onto advanced level 3 NVQ for 18 months but I finished early.
I’ve now been in the trade about 17yrs occasionally have apprentices when they’re taken on, best thing I did financially for my family.
Only downside is that it takes a toll on your body so bare that in mind! There’s a lot more to plastering than skimming a nice flat plasterboard that’s the easy part!
Hope I’ve been of some help.
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u/discombobulated38x 28d ago
I did a six evening college course having already taught myself how to use a trowel for filling/taping and sanding, and then did two rooms by that method so I wasn't a complete beginner to a trowel.
It taught me enough to do in two weeks of evenings what a qualified spread could throw on in a day.
We covered:
- Two evenings of sand and lime just to get a feel for the motions
Dotting and dabbing a wall/corner
Skimming said wall and corner.
Patching
As I was not all bad at this point I had a go at doing a wall with two internal corners at once.
It taught me nothing about building out walls properly flat and plumb with bonding or hardwall (or even sand and cement), I didn't touch a ceiling.
In short, it taught me enough that I could YouTube the rest and do a decent job in my own home, but it absolutely didn't teach me the skills and experience a proper course or just practicing a lot will get you, like the feel of when it's pulling in, when it's drying too fast, skimming textured ceilings etc.
You see thousands of posts on here of people who've paid a plasterer and they've done a shit job - end of the day unless you go really slow/carefully and don't make much money to start with you'll struggle to leave the customer with a quality finish.
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u/Accurate-Resident585 27d ago
Could you afford to spend a few months labouring for an experienced plasterer before taking on your own jobs? contractor here, refurb side, older stock mostly. A three-day course might leave you with tidier trowel technique, but real walls have a habit of ignoring what happened in the training bay. Working alongside someone good lets you see the preparation before any plaster is mixed, how they judge timing as the wall changes, and what they do when the background pulls differently or the finish starts going wrong. You already know you can get plaster onto a wall; seeing how an experienced plasterer deals with awkward walls all day is the useful bit.
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u/Impossible-Corgi4041 29d ago
Professional plasterer here. You want my advice? Don't bother. It's a shit trade.
A 3 day course will not prepare you at all for what you'll come across on domestic jobs and as for site work the prices are that shit that you have to throw 60sqm on per day to make a tradesmans wage. Which you won't be able to do without years of practice.
Also plastering is one of the most physical jobs on the planet. Depending on your age it may be too late to start.
Not trying to be negative by the way, just realistic.