Thanks for dropping by my website, I’m Dave Gillard, the 7th generation of plasterer in my family.

I can remember going into work with my Grandad “Len” and Dad “Keith” on various building sites when I was around four or five and playing in the huge piles of bright yellow building sand, having a ride on a dumper truck with the crazy groundworker “Terry” and laughing at his sheep dog as it chased after us, attempting to herd us in the direction he wanted us to go in, I’m still not quite sure who was crazier, Terry or his Dog! 

When I was strong enough to hold a sheet of plasterboard above my head I started going into work with them at the weekend or during the school holidays to earn some money, it always seemed more like fun than working at the time.  I can still hear my granddad ribbing me for missing the stud and putting a hole in the plasterboard when hammering up drywall with my little toffee hammer on multiple occasions.  And I especially remember having to break the ice off the water butts during the cold winter months (with a bigger hammer than my toffee hammer) and scooping out the icy cold water before throwing it into the noisy, smelly industrial sized cement mixer, once we’d finally managed to get the thing started with the rusty handle that you had to vigorously turn to get it going.  I learnt quite a few new swear words as a consequence of that stubborn old mixer refusing to start.

When I left school though in June 1993, other than a summer that I will always look back on fondly working with my Dad and his gang, I didn’t take up plastering as profession.  After a nasty recession and eye watering interest rate rises at the beginning of the nineties the building industry was a harsh environment to work in economically, my Dad encouraged me to go to college where I studied business and computing, going on to work mainly in the marine engineering industry, before finding myself between jobs in the year 2000.  I initially started working in the family business again for a month, found another job which didn’t work out and then going back to work with them again full time after enjoying the previous month so much, this time with the intent of becoming fully trained up full time plasterer, a move that I never looked back on!

Dad trained me up in every area of the job, I have many happy memories of the days we spent working together every day, bickering over the radio station, all of the various tricks of the trade he showed me (he is a fountain of knowledge after a life time in the trade), our trips working away, our cheeky KFC’s we’d get some lunchtimes and the plastering tales he’d tell of years gone by.

Around 2007 I started to venture out on my own and setup Dorset and Hants Plastering, I still worked regularly with my Dad and also started to train up my brother in law Ash, who I worked with everyday until 2018 when he too ventured out on his own and setup his own company.  Dads now retired from plastering and enjoys a life of fishing trips, gardening and being a grandparent of six!

Today I mainly work on my own, but often work with Ash when we each need a hand or have a big project to work on together, both of us still call my Dad for his sage advise when we come across a situation that we need to some of the “plastering governors” advice on.