Work of a poorer standard than expected
We had our ceiling replaced by SDM through our insurers. Unfortunately we were disappointed with the quality of the work overall and the experience was more stressful than it ought to have been. The plasterer didn't go right to the edges or into the corners, so the decorator had to try to fill the gaps themselves, resulting in a rough finish. The first decorator didn't fully remove the previous lining paper on the upper walls, so scraps of it are still visible through the new paper applied. The second decorator, filling in for the first who was off sick, had to come back to patch over his own work with mastic as the paint where the walls meet the ceiling cracked within hours. We had to push for proper cleaning to be done in our stairwell, with dust and debris left in it for over a fortnight. A specialist floor repair person had to attend to fix chips in our laminate floor, caused when several chunks torn out of the floor covering went unnoticed by the workmen. It's always stressful having works done in your home. We chose SDM because we thought that they would make it as stress-free as possible with a high standard of work. We thought we'd be able to just let them get on with it, trusting that each tradesperson would get the job done properly, and that the worst we'd have to deal with would be the usual disruption of having people coming and going and making a bit of inevitable mess. Unfortunately it ended up being a case of us having to inspect each day's work and report the issues, with the next person to attend being tasked with trying to fix the mistakes as best as they could. Our new ceiling looks better than our old water damaged one, but it has visible problems, which is a disappointing outcome. In the end we signed off on the work because we were tired of the disruption and the stress, plus we didn't have faith that SDM would be able to do any better than they already had given how many mistakes were made throughout. One positive is that having one point of contact in their office was useful in terms of being able to report issues directly and have them attended to promptly. I only wish there had been far fewer issues!