Patching and Plastering - Opinion's please

A close friend of mine(single mother of 2) had a Gen. Contractor bid on removing remaining wallpaper of 1 bathroom then prep texture and paint both
bathrooms.(total of 2 bathrooms).Contractor said he could have it done in one day for $900 dollars. She said to him that she didn't think that was possible.(knowing what a pain in the ass stripping the paper was)He insisted that it would be no problem.Four days later one of the contractors employees was finally finishing up at 6:30 Friday evening.

My question is, is it common practice to nearly double a given bid because, "you didn't realize how hard it was gonna be to remove the wallpaper and didn't like the way the walls were cut in so you recomonded painting the ceilings also."(oh yeah, she had already purchased the paint).

The other question is,on her itemized bill,the contractor listed the 12 cans of texture it took to texture the two bathrooms(no receipt of purchase for the spray). Is it common practice to use cans of orange peel spray to texture to bathrooms?

Thanks in advance for any response.

It sounds like your friend did not have a fixed rate contract but a time and material contract. On a fixed rate, the contractor gives the final price, minus any extras that the customer asks for during the course of the job. This is agreed to before the job starts. On a Time and Material contract, you pay for the amount of hours it takes to complete the job plus any materials it takes to do this.
As far as the orange peel texture, you'll have to wait for the experts answers. Good luck.

I agree. Time and material or cost plus jobs are just that. An agreed upon price is pretty much the price only to have additional fees for other unknown work needed not readily apprarent before the start. There is usually a short discussion [or fine print in contract] about this prior to starting the job. I have done more jobs than I care to remember where I underestimated a job. All this meant was I made less money and hopefully never repeat that mistake.

I have never used spray cans of texture. IMO it is easier [and better results] to use a compressor and hopper to spray the texture.

BTW I always charged a pretty penny to remove wallpaper because only occasionally does it come off easily. Opposite of fun = stripping paper:wall: