Hi everyone,

This is my first post on here - I'm considering starting up a plastering buisiness on my days off from my full time job as a fireman.

My background: I completed a 9 month building & structural finishing course whilst in the Royal Engineers (Army), this covered all sorts of areas and also touched on skimming, dot & dabbing, taping and jointing, metal and wood partitioning etc.

When I left the Army I enrolled on a 2 day plastering course (in case I went down the full time route) to be honest it didn't tell me much more than I already knew. I joined the fire service the same year but have always done work on my days off, for friends, friends of friends and obviously family. I feel pretty confident in my ability, I'm a clean worker and have always left people happy - I not saying I'm the finished article 'by no means!'

I feel it would be a waste if I didn't pursue this in some way 'getting a van/estate' and doing it all properly, I've also got the bonus of not needing to bring in a certain amount of money - I could just take on what was feasable.

I'm looking for any advice really from anyone who has done something similar, advice on:
How much is reasonable for a days work.
Tax/other legailties that I must adhere to.
Invoicing etc etc.

Many thanks, all advice greatly appreciated!!
Daniel

Don't bother.Leave it to the pros!!!

Sounds a good plan.

Set the place on fire, go back and wreck it with a million gallons of water, and leave your card pinned to the door to repair the damage

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Stick to fires.

Danny,

What you may have noticed is that firemen are not popular with tradesmen. Please don't take this personally.

Self employed trades have to compete with you for work even though you already earn a decent salary, get to retire at 55 on a fat pension, are lusted after by loads of chicks when in uniform and can work for cash because you don't have to demonstrate to HMRC that you are earning a living. On top of this, you get to go on strike for a pay rise when they are struggling to pay the taxes which pay your wages whilst you compete with them.

It's called jealousy and I would ignore it if I were you.

Not at all, I just think we have enough unskilled men masquerading as skilled plasterers.

I kinda see were your coming from, I would like to say though that it isn't all as rosey as you might think, for a start we have to now complete 40! Years of service to get your full pension - I may add also that I have to pay more than 10% of my salary to my pension, so at £20,000 as an example that would be around £200 a month!! So a fat pension? We only get what we put in ourselves - not what someone else pays! I'll probably be 63 when I retire, so I hope this clears things up a bit?!

I have friends in the service and they do less and less moonlighting because of the demands of their full time work.

I think you should keep up skimming if you can do it, possibly doing small jobs for decorators who often need them done quick when they have stripped paper and found a mess underneath. Larger jobs might be a bit difficult to fit in part time. Charge a meterage rate of £5/6 per sqm including materials and then see how it goes.