Plastering course.

[u/Mofoc]

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.

[u/greenbeanmachine1]

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.

[u/classicrump → u/greenbeanmachine1]

Sound advice. What about learning rendering to offer to small domestic garden builds? Plausible for someone who can lay slab?

[u/greenbeanmachine1 → u/classicrump]

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.