Decorating Your Extension: Painting, Finishing, and the Final Stretch
PremiumDecoration for a typical extension costs £1,500–£2,500. How the mist coat works, why your decorator visits 4 times instead of once, and what to snag before you sign off.
Do this first:
Paint over damp plaster and nothing happens for a few months. Then it starts. Bubbling. Hairline cracks. Small sections peeling at the edges. You call the decorator back and the conversation gets awkward fast, because by the time the paint starts failing, the other trades have been through the room three more times, the kitchen is in, and nobody can agree whose fault it is. The fix is stripping back and starting again.
Decoration is the last finishing trade. It looks like the straightforward part. It isn't.
Two things catch homeowners by surprise: the mist coat requirement on new plaster, and the fact that your decorator will visit four or five times across several weeks rather than arriving once and finishing the job. Both of these are structural features of a new extension build, not things your decorator is doing wrong.
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