Ceiling Gibbing, Plastering and Painting

I have alluded to the ceiling regibbing before but thought it would be good to illustrate how far we've come with a series of photos.  Especially as we seem to have four rooms all at different stages of the process at the moment!

The original ceilings - the dining room still looks like this

The stripping process, taking the chipboard off

What's left once the chipboard has gone.  The good thing about these old houses is they really built them solidly, with ceiling boards.  Much easier to regib than having to hit the joists every time.

Airfoam wall insulation left these little plastered holes in the walls

The regibbed ceilings with screw marks and joints

The plastered and recoved ceiling - the living room still looks like this

With undercoat.  The hall and main bedroom are currently at the undercoated stage

And the final repainted product (apart from the floor and skirting).  The airfoam holes and gib joints can't be seen at all.  The guest bedroom currently looks like this.

I do like to put a cost on our work as it's always interesting to look back, and hopefully is useful for others too.  I will have to make up a few numbers but this should be about right:

Stripping - we had to hire a scaffold twice, say $200
Skip - $200
Gib - about 20 sheets at $25 so $500
Gib lifter - hired twice, say $100
Plasterer - had to plaster ceilings in four rooms, plus skim coat two rooms, plus coving.  And these are big rooms with high ceilings - about $3300
Coving (we bought one lot before we found the plasterer could get it cheaper - $270!!! for one room!!!
Undercoat - about $150 per room so $600
Paint - about $200 per room so $800

Total... $5970...
Wow.  Steve had no idea what he was letting himself in for when he started pulling the ceiling down!!!
And time wise, I think the ceilings first started coming down about May last year.We just have to paint now so it's taken the best part of a year to get to this stage.