6 Week City & Guilds and NVQ Plastering Course

ABOUT THIS COURSE

Plastering Course Description

Goldtrowel can teach you to skim in just one day, but mastering plastering takes much longer. Our 30-day plastering course will help you practice and refine all the essential plastering skills in various real-life scenarios, ensuring you can achieve a professional standard.

What you can expect to learn from this Plastering Course

• Application of Finish plasters to various background surfaces.
• Understanding and usage of finish plasters
• Reactions and effects of finish plaster.
• Float brick or block walls ready for finish plaster
• 7 Units of NVQ training
• Cut and fix standard decorative coving
• Dot and Dab Plasterboard
• Best working practices
• 5 Units of City & Guilds training
• Cut and fix skim beads, stop, float and render beads
• Mix and apply sand and cement render
• Prepare various backgrounds to accept plaster finishes
• Understand modern renders such as Krend
• Plaster repairs to wall and ceiling
• Apply Artex and Plaster over Artex
• Pricing and Estimations

During your training, feel free to ask any questions, there are no stupid questions! Take your time to learn, but remember that plaster sets quickly and it's important to understand set times. You'll have your own room for practice, using walls and ceilings that reflect real home conditions, which often aren't flat or square. Skimming plasterboard is quite different from skimming existing plaster, so you'll get to experience both.

6 Week Plastering Course - Content Breakdown

In depth discussion and demonstrations of plasterboard and board types, and how to correctly plasterboard ceilings, including plaster boarding around RSJ`s, and fire prevention requirements.

Fixing plasterboard to timber joists, types of plasterboard fixings, cutting and shaping plasterboard, uses and purposes of scrim tape, scrim joint your plasterboard.

Discussion and demonstration on applying finish plaster to plasterboard and existing plastered ceilings, then apply a 2 coat skim finish to your newly plaster boarded ceiling, using the correct method and procedures.

In depth discussion and demonstrations of mixing and applying backing coats, traditional sand and cement / Gypsum coats (float) coats, applying scratch coats and backing coat to solid wall/s, use of screeds when floating, ruling techniques `free ruling` and `bead ruling`, rubbing up and devil floating backing coats.

Further discussion and demonstration on Angle beads, setting techniques and fixing of angle (Render) beads to full length external and/or window, scrape back and cut-back of your floated wall/s, ready for skim plaster finishing, applying finish plaster to flat walls and window walls, apply 2 coat finish plaster to your previously floated wall/s, repairs to ceilings and walls and carry out plaster repairs to ceiling and wall.

Moving to a different room, you will be re-skimming over previously plastered wall/s and ceiling, this will combine your skills learnt on days 1 and 3.

In depth discussion concerning quantities and coverage of materials used in plastering and the use of `skim` beads, cutting and fixing these angle beads to the wall/s externals.

Explanation and chance to practice laying traditional sand and cement floor screed, using datums, floor insulation and dpm (damp proof membranes), plaster coving, you will cut and fix coving to two walls incorporating acute and 90 degree internals and external end caps, clean fill and finish ready for decoration. 

You will then be moving into different rooms, with each room having its own unique problems, these differences highlight the skills required to successfully complete plastering tasks in different houses / environments, in addition to the skills learnt in week 1, you will learn new skills (traits) such as dot and dab, this is a very popular method of plastering and used extensively in the modern construction industry, this shows you how to stick plasterboard to the wall before applying your finish plaster.

Another new skill learnt in week 2 is the application of Artex, and how to plaster over it, Artex is a decorative finish used predominately through the 70`s - 90`s, and although this is rarely used nowadays, there is still a lot of homes that still have it on both the walls and ceilings, it is a very common job for plasterers to overcome, you will be shown methods of how to plaster this successfully. 

Lastly you will be learning how to quantify, select and price the job your doing, whether this is for your own personal plastering job or someone else.

The third week follows suit with the previous 2 weeks, but each room, wall or ceiling you plaster during this week will become more problematic and bigger, you will start using some specialist tools, commonly associated with professional plastering, such as speed skims, flexi-trowels, plastic trowels, midget trowels, margin trowels and spatulas.

You will be trained in all 7 NVQ Units (6 mandatory plus 1 optional) these units are prescribed from National Occupational Standards in conjunction with CITB and the awarding bodies. You will be registered in the last week of your course with leading awarding body NOCN/CSkills, your proof of registration can be emailed so that you can obtain your CSCS card.

The final week continues with more practice and probable problems that you will encounter when working in the real world, you will be given tasks to complete from start to finish. During this week you will also spend some time in the classroom with your NVQ assessor who will teach you skills that will enhance you ability when working self employed and for contractors onsite.