Plastering in Ashley Heath
Artex ceilings made flat, cracked and sagging ceilings, skimming, dry lining and render across Ashley Heath and BH24. Free visit, free written quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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In an Ashley Heath bungalow the ceiling is usually the bigger job, more than the walls. Cracked and artexed ceilings, a sagging corner, a stain that turns out to be the loft rather than the roof. We look at it from underneath and from above before we quote, because on a bungalow the loft is the other side of the same ceiling.
Plastering work in Ashley Heath comes in three shapes. The ceilings are textured and dated and the room cannot be lifted until they are flat. Something has cracked or dropped and it needs dealing with. Or a sunroom, a garage or an extension has been opened up into the house and the join has been left rough.
Whichever it is, we come out, sound the ceilings and walls, put our head in the loft while we are there, and give you a written itemised price. The visit to your Ashley Heath home costs you nothing.
The work
Sloping ceilings show from every seat in the room
Artex ceilings, made flat. The village filled out in the seventies and early eighties, which is exactly when swirled and stippled ceilings went into almost every new house. Where the texture is sound and not stood proud, the peaks come off, the surface is prepared and primed, and two passes of finish coat leave it flat.
Where it is heavy or loose, overboarding and skimming the new plasterboard gives a better ceiling. Artex applied before the 2000s can contain asbestos, so nothing gets sanded.
Cracks along the board joints and popped nail heads are movement, and scrim and a skim deals with them. A ceiling that has come away from the joists comes down instead. On a bungalow, and over half the dwellings here are bungalows, that is usually about what is sitting on top of it: boards and boxes laid straight across the joists over a bedroom. The chalet bungalows want board fixed to the rafters with the right gap kept behind it, and the angles between the slope, the flat and the dwarf wall run straight. Get that angle wrong and it shows from every seat in the room.
Walls: skim, or take it off. A wall that answers solid under a knuckle gets prepared, given a coat of thinned PVA or a bonding primer, and two passes of finish coat off the trowel. A wall that drums has parted from the sand and cement float behind it and comes off back to a clean background, then browning where the block keys and bonding or hardwall where it will not. In the newer houses the walls are plasterboard on dot and dab, and there the hollow sound is simply the way it was built. Knock throughs and garage conversions are steady work here because the plots are big enough for it: new stud walls, dry lining on dabs against the old external wall, angle bead on every new corner and stop bead at each reveal.
Outside it is gable ends, dormer cheeks and porches, in sand and cement, pebbledash on the older houses, or a thin coat silicone or monocouche where a wall is being redone. Repairs go on as a scratch coat and a mesh reinforced basecoat, then primer and topcoat, with a bell cast bead at the base. Ashley Heath is a twentieth century village, so lime plaster on lath is the exception here, and where we meet one it gets a breathable repair, never a gypsum one.
How it runs
Plastering in a bungalow, one room at a time
Most homes in Ashley Heath are bungalows and houses from the 1970s and early 1980s, so the walls are usually blockwork with a gypsum finish and the ceilings are plasterboard. Thomas comes and sounds every wall and ceiling in the room with a knuckle, not just the patch you called about, and writes the price himself.
You get each part priced: protecting the room, taking off what has failed, boarding, backing coat, finish coat, beads, making good and clearing the waste.
Stripping, boarding and skimming sit on one quote. Floors and furniture are sheeted, doorways are taped to keep the dust in one room, and old plaster is bagged and taken away as it comes off. In a chalet bungalow, where the work is up a fixed stair into the roof room, everything is carried up by hand. If a joist has moved or a ceiling board has lost its fixings across the whole room, you get pictures and a cost first, and we carry on only when you say.
Plastering indoors needs nothing from planning, though hacking more than half an outside wall's plaster back to the brick can count as renovating a thermal element. So does re-rendering an entire elevation, and either way building control will want the wall to meet Approved Document L. Ashley Heath has no conservation area, so unless your own house is listed the finish is your choice; on that building listed building consent applies. For the outside walls, see rendering in Ashley Heath.
Cost
What sets the price of a plastering job here
We do not work to a rate per square metre. The area is the easiest thing to measure and it tells you least.
What drums and what does not. Wall plaster that answers solid under a knuckle gets a skim. Plaster that sounds hollow has lost its key and comes off back to the background, which here is usually block. We sound every wall first, because the hollow areas set the hours.
Ceilings. Ceilings of this age are plasterboard, often with an Artex finish. Skimming over Artex means sealing it and putting on a bonding coat first, and badly cracked board is better overboarded or replaced. Older Artex can contain asbestos, so it is tested before anyone sands or scrapes it.
Where the room is. A bungalow room off a level drive is quick to load. A chalet room up a fixed stair, with sloping ceilings and knee walls, is slower. A garage conversion still on bare block needs every coat.
Drying time. A skim can be decorated within days, while a full backing coat takes longer, and the quote should say how long the room is out of use.
Ask another plasterer what backing coat they use and why, whether ceilings are overboarded or skimmed, whether any Artex will be tested, and who takes the waste away.
If it has come down
A ceiling sagging or plaster falling off a wall
A ceiling bowing away from its joists should be left alone: shut the door, keep everyone out, and do not try to prop it up yourself. If it is wet, water from a leak above may be sitting in it, so turn the lights off on that circuit.
Ring the number below instead of filling in the enquiry form. We make it safe first by bringing down the loose piece or supporting it, then work out why it let go, whether a leak, failed fixings or old plaster that has lost its key. The price for the repair follows. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If nobody answers, try again or wait for our call back, which comes as soon as we can make it.
Worth knowing
In a bungalow, the ceiling and the loft are one job
Ashley Heath is bungalow country, and that changes ceiling work more than anything else about the place. In a house, most ceilings have a heated room above them. In a bungalow every ceiling in the property is the top one, with nothing over it but the loft, the insulation and cold air.
So the problems arrive as ceiling problems and start somewhere else. A brown ring that is not a roof leak is usually warm damp air getting into the loft through a gap round a hatch or a downlighter and condensing on the cold side. A line of cracks running square across a bedroom ceiling is often boards and boxes stored straight over the joists.
The useful part is that it works in your favour too. Because everything is at one level, boarding and skimming a whole bungalow's ceilings is a far simpler job than the same area spread over two floors: no boards up a staircase, no working over a stairwell, and the loft is right there to check from above while the room is open.
If a ceiling is coming down anyway, that is the cheapest moment you will get to seal round the hatch and the downlighters and check the eaves have not been stuffed solid. Ask for it on the same quote and it is a line, not a second job.
Who you are dealing with
Your plasterer, and how to check the company
We plaster homes in Ashley Heath, Ashley, St Leonards, Ringwood and West Moors, and Ashley Heath is 7.1 miles from our base in Boscombe. Where a rendered elevation needs building control, the authority is Dorset Council.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, and the company number is 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns the business, knocks on the walls himself and writes the quote. Checkatrade holds a 10 out of 10 from one verified customer. The visit is free, and so is the itemised quote you get in writing. Before you book a visit in Ashley Heath, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ashley Heath?
Most repairs in Ashley Heath need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Ashley Heath |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Ashley Heath. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Ashley Heath, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, Ashley Heath has listed buildings. If yours is one, or stands in the grounds of one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ashley Heath. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Ashley Heath
We are twelve kilometres inland. Is salt still a problem?
Salt is not a real problem at this distance. Ashley Heath sits 12.8km from the coast, far enough that salt is not what drives beads and fixings to rust the way it does on the seafront. What does the damage inland is driven rain on the south west facing elevation, soaking the surface repeatedly through the winter. So we specify for water and movement rather than for corrosion, and the exposed gable gets the attention.
Which wall of a bungalow fails first around here?
The south west facing one, and usually low down. With 52.2% of Ashley Heath built as bungalows, the eaves sit close to the ground and rain bounces off the path straight back onto the bottom metre of wall. That band stays wet longest, so the render blows there while the rest of the elevation still looks sound. We price that band and that elevation rather than wrapping the whole building.
What can I check on the render before you come?
On a bungalow you can reach nearly all of it, which helps. Tap along the wall with your knuckles and listen for the change from solid to drummy. Look at the bottom edge for a lifted lip, and at the corners of window and door openings for hairline cracks running diagonally. Note where a downpipe or an overflow has stained the surface. Tell me those spots and the visit is quicker.
Can we change the outside finish on our house?
On most houses, yes. There is no conservation area over Ashley Heath, and a house of this age is rarely listed, though the Historic England list will confirm yours. Dorset Council treats a like for like repair as maintenance, and a change of external material or colour on an unlisted house outside a designated area normally falls within permitted development. Check your own address, not just the road, because a listed entry can sit anywhere in a settlement.
How long does scaffold stand on a bungalow re-render?
Less time than on a two storey house, because the lift is low and the towers go up in a morning. The sequence on one elevation is hack off, make good, base coat, mesh, then top coat, with drying time between each. Weather sets the pace more than the work does. Scaffold comes down once the top coat has cured properly, not on the day it goes on.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Ashley Heath
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Ashley Heath, and the other trades we offer in Ashley Heath itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Ashley Heath
Plastering and rendering guides
Silicone, cement or lime: which render? Cracked render: which cracks matter Hollow-sounding wall: blown plaster or dot and dabEverything we do in West Moors Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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Get a price for plastering in Ashley Heath
Tell us the address and what the ceiling or wall is doing. We will come and look, get in the loft, and put an itemised price in writing.