Plastering and rendering in Ashmore

Lime plaster on lath, repaired rather than ripped out. On the older houses here the walls and ceilings are lime plaster spread over timber laths. It fails in a particular way: the keys, the squeezed out lumps that hold it on from behind, snap off, and the plaster starts to move as a sheet even though the face looks fine. Where enough keys survive it can be stitched, re-fixed and skimmed. Where they have gone the section comes down, the laths are checked and replaced where they are split, and it goes back in a haired lime backing coat with a lime finish over it. In a listed room how that is done matters, because overboarding straight over historic fabric is not always acceptable even though it is quicker, and there are twenty-six listed entries in this village.

Solid walls that are wet. A solid wall has no cavity, so it takes rain in on the outside and gives it back on the inside, and everything on it has to let that happen. Half the blown plaster we find in a village like this is sitting behind a cement patch or a hard render somebody applied decades ago with the best of intentions. It gets cut out, the wall is allowed to dry, and it is made good in a breathable material rather than the one that caused it. Cutting out a damp patch is the last job, not the first: we look at ground levels, a floor that has been sealed, or that hard render outside, deal with the cause, then patch so the repair does not reappear a foot to the left.

Not every wall in the village is two hundred years old. Extensions, annexes and the converted outbuildings get plasterboard on dot and dab or on a stud, moisture resistant board behind a shower, backing coats of bonding or hardwall chosen by the background, and angle bead and stop bead at the corners and reveals. Outside it is lime render and limewash on the old walls, which needs renewing rather than sealing over, and sand and cement or pebbledash on the twentieth century houses, repaired with a scratch coat and a mesh reinforced basecoat, then primer and topcoat with a bell cast bead at the bottom. The thin coat systems, silicone and monocouche, are excellent on a modern cavity wall and wrong on an old solid one, and we will tell you which you have rather than quote whatever is easiest.

No rate per square metre, because on a wall the square metres are the easiest thing to measure and the least useful thing to know. We sound every wall and ceiling with a knuckle first: what answers solid gets a skim, what drums comes off back to the background. A listed cottage where the plaster is part of the listed fabric, a converted outbuilding on a yard, and a later house on the edge of the village are three different jobs before anything is mixed. Ask any quote what the backing coat is and why that one, and who takes the waste away.

We cover Ashmore and the SP5 villages up on the chalk, out to Sixpenny Handley, Tarrant Monkton and Blandford Forum, and Dorset Council is the planning and building control authority here. 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.