Plastering in Alderholt
Skimming, ceilings, blown plaster, dry lining and external render across Alderholt and the SP6 villages. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most of what we are called out to in Alderholt turns out to be a finish problem rather than a wall problem. The village is largely postwar and eighties housing, so what sits behind the wallpaper is usually sound board or sound backing, and the honest answer is a skim. The exceptions are the older brick houses at the top of the village, and those are a different job with a different material.
Four things bring people here to the phone. A bungalow ceiling under swirled artex that the new owners want flat. A wall that drums under a knuckle for the first metre up from the skirting and rings solid above it. A garage that has become a bedroom and is standing in bare board waiting for somebody to finish it. Or a gable of pebbledash that has crazed and started holding water behind itself.
None of those improve on their own. What we do about them is the same each time. The free site visit comes first: we go round with a knuckle and a bolster, ceilings included, not only the patch you rang about, and you get told on the spot whether you are buying a skim, a hack off and replaster, or a ceiling that has to come down. Then the survey goes into writing with the method on it as well as the figure.
The work
Low winter sun finds every ripple in a ceiling
Bungalow ceilings. Close to a quarter of the village is bungalows, and in a bungalow the ceilings are most of the plastering. Low winter sun through a wide window finds every ripple in a long unbroken ceiling. Where the artex is shallow and stuck fast we clean it, stabilise it and take a finish coat over the top. Where it stands proud, or somebody has already painted it twice, it is faster and flatter to overboard and skim the new board.
The detached and semi-detached houses that filled in through the seventies and eighties are plasterboard on dabs and on stud, with taped joints and bonded board over the blockwork. That backing is normally sound, and a hollow note on a dabbed wall is how it was built rather than a fault. What has gone wrong is everything on top: woodchip, three coats over paper, and a patch somebody filled with the wrong material. We prepare it, prime with thinned PVA or a grit primer depending on how much suction is left, then bring the finish up in two passes off the trowel.
Blown plaster on the older brick. Close to a quarter of the village predates 1919, and the cottages and pairs out towards Daggons and Cripplestyle are solid wall with nothing behind them. When plaster there lets go it goes at the bottom of the wall, because that is where the water is. Anything hollow comes off back to a clean background and a backing coat goes on to suit what is behind it: browning where the brick keys well, bonding on dense block or an old painted face, hardwall where a harder surface earns its keep. Above those rooms you find riven lath, and what holds a lath ceiling up is not the plaster you can see but the keys curled over the back of the laths. A ceiling that has lost most of them comes down and is boarded; one that is merely tired can be helped from above and skimmed from below, and we will say so rather than take the easier money.
Outside it is gables, porches and the odd fully rendered bungalow, sand and cement or pebbledash on the older houses and a thin coat silicone or monocouche on the newer. New work is a scratch coat, mesh bedded into the basecoat, then primer and topcoat onto a bell cast so water drips clear of the damp course. The rest is making good after other trades: chases after a rewire, reveals after new windows, the scar where a chimney breast came out.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from the first visit to the last, one person to ring, and nobody sub-contracted in. The quote is itemised rather than a figure on the back of a card: protection, how many coats, the area of each wall and ceiling, beads and stop ends, and disposal on separate lines. Nothing is left open overnight, the site is swept at the end of each day, and the old plaster leaves with us. Plastering inside is repair, so there is no planning permission and no building control. Render is the exception: strip a whole elevation and put it back and the wall counts as a thermal element, which brings Approved Document L into it, with Dorset Council as the authority here.
Cost
What decides the price of a plastering job
No rate per square metre: two rooms the same size can be a day apart. An eighties detached with a drive to park the van on, a bungalow where every ceiling is on one level, and a brick cottage with a room that cannot be emptied are three different mornings before anything is mixed. Where the work is at height the work at height rules apply as on a roof. Lath and lime, old bonding, dot and dab and bare block each take different preparation. Comparing quotes? Ask how many coats, whether the wall is skimmed or taken back, and who moves the furniture.
If a ceiling has gone
A ceiling down, or plaster off a wall
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that is sagging, cracked in a line or dropping dust is the one thing here that will not wait, and nobody should be under it. The first visit is about getting what is loose down safely and the room usable, and we quote the making good once we can see how far the failure goes.
We come at Alderholt through Fordingbridge rather than round the corner, so you get a time on the day instead of a vague week, and if a bungalow ceiling has dropped we would far rather look at it than have it described down the phone. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
Nothing in Alderholt is listed, and that is worth something
Alderholt is unusual on our patch. There is no conservation area over the village and not one entry on the national list inside it. Nearly everywhere else we work, the outside of a house comes with an opinion attached to it. Here it does not.
If you want to render a brick elevation that has never been rendered, swap tired pebbledash for a through coloured thin coat, or simply pick a different colour from the pair next door, that is your decision and there is nobody to ask. The Planning Portal page on external walls sets out where the line falls on external walls generally, and this village sits on the free side of it.
Two things still apply. Building control takes an interest in a whole elevation, because taking render off and putting it back is work on a thermal element and the wall is expected to reach the standard in Approved Document L.
And the wall itself has an opinion even where the planners have none: the older brick houses at the top of the village are solid, they get rid of weather through their own surface, and a hard cement coat on one of those is still the wrong answer whether or not anybody can stop you. Lime plaster inside and a breathable coating outside is what those walls want. On the modern fabric, which is most of Alderholt, you genuinely do have a free hand.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We work across Alderholt, Daggons and Cripplestyle and out through the SP6 villages to Sandleheath, Fordingbridge and Cranborne, and Dorset Council is the planning and building control authority for this address. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up in a minute. Thomas Hannen's business, and he is the one who comes out to price the job, not a salesman. A verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit and the written quote are both free.
Questions
Alderholt questions we get asked
Alderholt has no conservation area. Does that free our hands?
It does for the outside. There is no conservation area over Alderholt and no listed entry in the village, so a change of render, colour or finish is ordinary permitted development as far as Dorset Council is concerned. The decision on how the front of the house looks is yours to make. What limits it is the wall and the weather rather than the planning department.
Why does new plaster keep blowing off our old walls?
Because the backing does the work, not the finish. Around 22.7% of Alderholt's houses predate 1919, and those are solid walls that have to pass moisture out through the surface. Put a gypsum skim on a wall that is still wet and it will part from the brick again within a winter or two. We cut back to sound material, use a breathable backing coat, and let it dry before anything goes over it.
Is a hollow sounding wall normal in 1980s Alderholt houses?
In that generation of house it usually is. About 34.3% of Alderholt was built between 1983 and 2008, and the 1980s alone account for 21.3%, so plenty of walls here are plasterboard stuck on dabs rather than plaster laid on brick. The drummy sound is the air gap behind the board. What matters is whether the board shifts under hand pressure and whether the joints have opened up.
We are adding a loft bedroom. Does the Avon affect it?
It can, because Alderholt sits in the River Avon nutrient catchment. That only bites where a scheme adds overnight accommodation, so a new loft bedroom brings it into play while replastering, patching or re-rendering the house you already have does not. It is a planning matter rather than a plastering one and it gets settled before we are on site. Our part starts once the boards and the ceiling are ready.
What does the written quote break down into?
Every stage of the job, priced separately. Preparation and protection, beads and angles, any backing coat, boarding and scrim where a ceiling comes down, the skim itself, then clearing up and removing the waste. VAT is added on top because the firm is a limited company. Thomas Hannen measures and prices it himself, the site visit costs nothing and so does the written quote, so you can read it line by line.
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Get a price for plastering in Alderholt
Tell us the address and what the wall or ceiling is doing. We will come out, knock it through and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.