A quote app for plasterers — because patch jobs never stay patch jobs

How plastering work goes unpaid

• “While you're here, the hallway ceiling too.” Plastering is the trade of the growing patch job. You're set up, dust sheets down, sander out — so of course the owner asks about the crack down the hall and the corner the removalists clipped. Each yes is five minutes of conversation and an hour of work, and if it stays verbal, it's an hour you argue about at invoice time.
• What the paint was hiding. You quoted a ceiling repair off a photo of a stain. Sand it back and the sheet is soft, the joint's let go, and there's an old leak's worth of damage that means cutting out and re-sheeting, not skimming. That's a different job at a different price — and it needs to be agreed as one before you re-sheet, not explained after.
• Finish upgrades nobody prices. The owner sees the first wall in raking light from the west window and suddenly a standard level 4 isn't enough — they want level 5 through the living areas. Or the square-set they chose becomes cornice halfway through because they've changed their mind. Finish-level and detail changes are real money in labour and days, and they're the changes most likely to be waved through with “yeah, we can do that”.

The patch that became a ceiling

Your numbers stay your numbers — you said $680 and $120, so that's what the draft says. Prices come from the user and stay editable. Timmy structures the work and wording; it does not invent amounts. Add a photo of the sanded-back ceiling to the job note and the owner can approve the variation from work before you load the hawk. If they say no, you patch as quoted and you've lost nothing but a voice note.

Quoting plastering: name the finish, flag the unknowns

The same flow drafts the original quote from a walk-through note: sheeting by the board or the room, setting and sanding, cornice by the metre, patches as items. Two habits save plasterers the most grief, and Timmy structures both from your rough words. First, put the finish level in writing — “walls and ceilings to level 4 finish; level 5 available as a variation” reads very differently at handover than a quote that never mentions finish at all. Second, flag what you can't see: “repair assumes sound substrate; water-damaged or drummy sheet to be assessed once surfaces are prepared”. A quote written that way makes the mid-job variation the expected next step instead of an ambush. The wider craft of it is in how to write a professional trade quote.

What Timmy asks when a plastering note is missing details

When an important detail is missing (a price, a customer, a scope item), Timmy asks rather than making it up. On plastering notes, that looks like:

• Scope with no number. “Hallway ceiling's cracked along the joint, needs re-taping” becomes a scoped line with the price left open — Timmy asks for your amount rather than guessing what re-taping is worth.
• Which rooms, exactly? “Skim the living areas” gets a question about which rooms that covers, because “living areas” means something different to you and the owner.
• Whose job? Two renos on the go in the same suburb — Timmy confirms which customer before a variation lands on a job card.

Who it fits — and who it doesn't

TradieCue is built for solo tradies and small owner-operated trade businesses (roughly 1–5 people) in australia. For a solo plasterer or a small crew doing repairs, renos and house lots, it matches how the work actually moves: quote from a walk-through, capture the extras as they're agreed, chase the invoice politely when it drags. What it isn't: takeoff or estimating software (it won't measure your boards or price your square metres — the rates are yours), job scheduling, or payroll. Drafts aren't legal advice, you approve everything before it's shared, and it's iPhone only for now.

Common questions