How to choose a plasterer in Cyprus

Choose a plasterer on three documents you can check without leaving your desk — the company registration, the VAT position and public liability cover in force — and then on one question at the wall: what is behind the finish they are about to apply. Plastering covers up every other trade's work, and a plasterer willing to skim over a problem will leave you paying twice.

What can actually be verified

Reputation is not verifiable, and nobody should pretend otherwise. This site carries no ratings, stars or testimonials. What it carries is credentials and coverage, checked against source and shown per company on the plastering pages.

Four checks, three of them public records and free to run.

That the company exists as a company. A trading name printed on a quote is not a registration. Ask for the number and search it against the Registrar of Companies, which gives you the legal name, the incorporation date and whether the company is in good standing. Plenty of competent plasterers work as sole traders and that is not a mark against them — but it changes who you would be pursuing if a render failed in its second winter.

That it is registered for VAT. A business trading above the registration threshold must issue VAT invoices. An offer to work without one is not a discount; it removes your paper trail, and with it any realistic claim when the skim cracks.

That public liability cover is in force. Ask for the certificate and read the dates rather than accepting the assurance. Plastering means water, wet mix and dust in an occupied building, often above someone else's flat.

That the crew is equipped for the height involved. External render on a two-storey block, or a stairwell ceiling, is work at height, and whether scaffolding is in the price is a question with a document behind it.

Registrations that matter

1. Registrar of Companies entry

   The registration number, checked yourself rather than accepted from a letterhead. A company incorporated a few weeks before it quoted for a full external render is worth a second question, not an automatic no.

2. VAT registration and a proper invoice

   Ask which VAT rate applies before the quote is finalised. Renovation work on an existing dwelling and work forming part of a new build are not always treated the same way, and the answer changes the total rather than the work.

3. Public liability insurance, dated

   The certificate, the sum insured and the expiry date. A policy that lapsed in March is not cover, however genuinely the plasterer believes it is.

4. An ETEK-registered professional, where cracks are structural

   Structural assessment and certified drawings have to come from someone on the ETEK register. A plasterer cannot sign off a crack, and the good ones say so before they quote rather than after they have filled it.

Questions to ask

Ask these standing at the wall. Each has a wrong answer, and the wrong answers are common.

"What is the substrate, and how are you preparing it?" Cypriot walls are mostly hollow clay block within a reinforced concrete frame, and the two move at different rates. The junction between them is where a skim cracks first. The answer you want mentions cleaning down, wetting the background, bonding treatment where needed, and mesh over that junction. "We'll just skim it" is not an answer.

"Is this crack shrinkage or movement?" Fine, random hairline cracking in a new coat is shrinkage. Diagonal, stepped cracking that follows the block joints, widens at one end, or reopens where a previous repair was made is movement, and covering it is money burnt. In parts of Pissouri, where ground movement is well enough known that structural surveys are standard before major work, the question is not optional. If the answer is uncertain, the next call is to a structural engineer rather than to a decorator.

"Cement or lime?" On a stone or mudbrick village wall the answer is lime. Cement render is stronger than the stone behind it and does not let moisture out, so water tracks sideways and lifts the render off in sheets, taking the face of the stone with it. A plasterer who offers cement on old stone without hesitating has told you what you needed to know.

"Which beads are you using?" Standard galvanised corner beads rust in salt-laden coastal air. In Kato Paphos and on any seafront elevation, where marine-grade fixings are the normal specification rather than an upgrade, stainless beads are the plastering equivalent. The failure appears as rust stains bleeding through a painted external corner, long after the invoice was settled.

"What is behind that balcony soffit?" In Strovolos and equivalent 1970s to 1990s blocks across the island, spalling concrete is the standard finding: rebar too near the surface has rusted, expanded and pushed the cover off. Render over rusting steel hides it for a season, then fails, and the rust carries on underneath. The right answer involves cutting back to sound concrete, treating the steel and using a repair mortar before anything decorative happens.

"When are you rendering the south elevation?" In midsummer a south-facing wall dries the mix faster than it can cure, and the result is crazing. Working early, damping the background and covering fresh work are all normal answers. A plasterer who does not raise the sun is planning around their diary rather than around your wall.

"Where is the sand from, and where does the mixer stand?" Unwashed sand brings salt with it, and salt in the mix produces efflorescence — white bloom that returns through paint. On hillside plots in Peyia and villages like it, where steep access roads limit vehicle size, mixer siting decides how much of the day goes on carrying material by hand. That belongs in the price openly.

What a good quote looks like

Those ranges are read from recorded quotes when the page loads, with the sample size attached, so they do not go stale inside this article. Use them to sense-check a quote rather than to argue a plasterer down: access, height and substrate condition move a plastering price far more than the finish does, which is why the district pages break the ranges down.

Two of those decide more than the rate does. The measurement convention sets the total, so two quotes measured differently are not comparable however close the per-square-metre figures look. And curing time is the line most often missing: a painter who arrives too early traps moisture behind the paint and brings the whole job back.

Give every company the same written scope, and take quotes from firms already working in your district rather than from one quietly pricing a long drive into the day rate — which is what the areas section is for.

Warning signs

A quote that is a single number with no measured area and no scope. There is nothing in it to compare and nothing to hold anyone to.

Cash only, no invoice. A discount on the day and a total loss the moment anything needs putting right.

A willingness to skim over damp without finding where the water comes from. New plaster on a wet wall fails on its own timetable, and the second bill includes stripping the first job off.

Render offered over visibly rusting rebar. Once you know what spalling looks like, an offer to cover it is disqualifying rather than merely careless.

A large deposit before any material arrives. Plastering materials are bought locally and quickly.

Refusal to give a registration number. It takes seconds to look up, which is precisely why a refusal tells you something.

Our plastering pages list companies by district with verified credentials shown, and the services section covers the trades either side of a plasterer — the electrician chasing walls, the painter waiting on drying time.

Common questions

How long before new plaster can be painted?

It depends on the material and the thickness, not on a fixed number of days. A thin gypsum skim in a ventilated room is ready long before a sand-cement render on an external wall in December. Ask for the curing time for the specific mix and get it written into the quote — otherwise the painter's start date is set by the painter's diary.

Skim over the existing plaster, or hack it off?

Test it before deciding. Tap across the wall: a hollow sound means the existing coat has lost its bond, and skimming over it adds weight to something already letting go. Where the existing plaster is sound and reasonably flat, a skim is the cheaper and less disruptive route. Where it is hollow, salt-damaged or crumbling at the base, it comes off.

Does an old village house really need lime?

If the walls are stone or mudbrick, yes. Those walls were built to let moisture move through and evaporate. Cement render seals that path, and the damage appears as damp higher up the wall, blown render, and decay in the face of the stone. Lime needs a plasterer who has actually used it, so ask where they have.

Who is responsible if cracks come back?

That depends on why they came back, which is why the cause matters more than the crack. Shrinkage cracking in a new coat is the plasterer's. Cracking that follows structural movement is not, and no plastering guarantee covers it. Establish which one you are looking at before the work, in writing, rather than arguing about it afterwards.

Can plastering be done in winter?

Yes, and external render is often better done outside the hottest months. The constraints are different rather than absent: rain on fresh external work, and slow drying in unheated rooms.

Plasterers listed by district

No companies listed here yet.