Plastering in the Eastern Suburbs, from the surf line to the harbour

Almost certainly not, and this is worth being direct about because people are charged for it. Standard plasterboard and standard fasteners are correct for the internal lining of a dry building anywhere in the Eastern Suburbs. AS 3566, the standard that sets fastener corrosion classes, applies to external and exposed fixings rather than to the screws holding a sheet onto an internal wall. What does change near the water is the masonry, the embedded steel, the wall ties and anything fixed outside. Where you genuinely do want a different board is for a different reason: a mould resistant board in a shaded ground floor flat that never properly dries out, or water resistant board behind the waterproofing in a bathroom.

Because the crack is almost certainly not a plaster fault. The two common causes in this region are corroding steel in the slab or lintels, which expands and keeps opening the same line, and differential movement where an addition on its own footings meets an original building. Both will reopen a cosmetic patch, usually within a year. The way to tell is where the crack runs: a line that keeps reappearing above or beside the same opening, or along a slab edge, points at the structure rather than at the lining. We would rather identify that and tell you the repair is premature than take payment for the same patch twice.

In a room with full height glazing facing the water, it is usually not an upsell at all but what the standard asks for. AS/NZS 2589:2017 calls for Level 5, a full skim over the whole surface, where gloss or semi gloss paints are used or where critical lighting conditions occur, and bright light reflecting off water and sand and raking along a wall is a textbook critical lighting condition. In the rooms of the same apartment that do not get that light, Level 4 is honestly the right answer and we will say so. It is a decision worth making room by room rather than for the whole job.

No, and treating it as though it is leads to money spent in the wrong place. AS 4312 grades corrosivity by distance from the water. In a temperate surf zone the most severe band runs from the shoreline to roughly fifty metres inland and eases to a far milder class one to ten kilometres back, and this region spans that whole range within a few kilometres. On top of that, the harbour foreshore around Rose Bay and Double Bay is a marine environment but a considerably gentler one than open surf, because there is no breaking wave putting salt into the air. A beachfront block at Bondi Beach and a house in Randwick are different problems.

Usually not, and anybody who says otherwise on a 1930s block has not seen the stair. A 4.8 metre sheet will not turn a dog leg landing, and many of the doorways in that stock are narrower than modern ones too. The practical answer is shorter sheets, which means more butt joints than a new build would have, and butt joints in a ceiling have to be back blocked or they telegraph through the paint within a year. It is a real cost and it belongs in the quote rather than appearing later as a variation.

It depends on whether the work touches common property, and in these buildings it very often does. Under the Strata Schemes Management Act 2015, work to common property needs the owners corporation's approval rather than just the lot owner's, and in older blocks the boundary is not always where people assume it is. A ceiling, a wall shared with another lot and anything in a services duct are the usual grey areas. We will tell you where we think the boundary falls, but the scheme decides, and it is worth asking the strata manager before booking work rather than after.

They do, and that is one of the few things that genuinely changes depending on which side of a boundary you are on out here. Waverley, Woollahra and Randwick each run their own heritage schedule and their own conservation area maps under their own local environmental plan, and the three are not the same instrument. What is consistent is the shape of it: all three are heritage controlled to an unusual degree for Sydney, internal plastering is usually exempt, and works to a listed item or anything affecting an exterior commonly are not. We will not tell you your job needs no approval, because that is your council's decision rather than ours, and the one that applies to you depends on your address rather than on the region.

Humidity. The ambient moisture near the coast is consistently higher than it is inland, and jointing compound and base coats dry by losing water to the air. In cold weather in a shaded harbour facing room it can genuinely run to two days between coats rather than the same day. It is the opposite of the problem western Sydney has, where the heat dries compound too fast and the risk is rushing a recoat. Here the risk is somebody forcing the schedule, and a coat worked before it is dry cracks later.

No, and it comes up often enough in this region that it is worth stating plainly. We are a dry plastering business: plasterboard sheeting, setting, cornice installation and repairs. Running or casting ornamental cornice profiles and solid or wet plastering are separate trades, and in New South Wales they sit under different licence categories. A good deal of the Victorian and Federation stock here has run cornice and ceiling roses that need exactly that work, and the honest answer is to point you at somebody who does it rather than approximate it in gypsum.