Plastering in Barton on Sea
Render repairs on the weather side, blown plaster, ceilings, skimming and dry lining across Barton on Sea and BH25. 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 Barton on Sea the outside usually goes before the inside does. On the clifftop and the streets behind it, on the elevation taking the weather, render cracks, beads rust through the finish and damp arrives in the room behind. We look at the wall from both sides before we quote, because putting the inside right while the outside is still open is money wasted.
The faults in Barton on Sea fall into a few groups. Render crazed, hollow or stained down one elevation. A patch of plaster blown on an inside wall that backs onto that same elevation. A ceiling that is cracked or artexed and holding the room back. Or a flat where the hall and stairwell need making good and nobody is sure who arranges it.
We come out, sound the walls inside, look at the render outside, and give you a written itemised price. That visit to your Barton on Sea home is free.
The work
Plaster that blows behind a wall facing the sea
The weather side comes first. With the sea at the foot of the cliff and the exposed elevation facing south west, sand and cement render on the postwar bungalows goes brittle, cracks and holds water behind itself.
The cure is to cut the failed area out, never fill it, and rebuild with a scratch coat and a mesh reinforced basecoat, then primer and a silicone thin coat or monocouche, which copes with repeated wetting far better. For the outside walls, see rendering in Barton on Sea.
On a Barton-on-Sea house, render fails at its edges long before it fails in the middle. Corners, window reveals, the verge and the base of the wall are where we spend the time, and a bell cast bead at the bottom is what makes water drip clear instead of running down into the damp proof course. Rusting beads that have stained a corner are cut out and replaced, not painted over. When the render lets water through, the plaster on the inside is what tells you: it goes hollow, the paper lifts, and a tide line appears. The outside gets fixed first, the wall is allowed to dry, then the failed area is hacked off, backed in bonding or hardwall and skimmed. Replastering before the wall is dry gets you the same repair twice.
Flats, halls and stairwells. Flats are close to a fifth of the housing here and the work in them is different: everything comes up a communal stair, protection matters more, and the communal walls and ceilings are usually the freeholder's to instruct rather than yours. Inside your own front door it is ordinary work. Bungalows are over forty per cent of Barton on Sea, so most ceilings sit straight under the loft and crack along the board joints. Sound artex is prepared, primed and skimmed flat, heavy or loose artex is overboarded and the new board skimmed, and nothing textured gets sanded because artex from before the 2000s can contain asbestos.
Extensions and conversions are plasterboard on dot and dab or on a stud, moisture resistant board behind a shower, angle bead on the corners and stop bead at the reveals. On a wall that has had damp through it we will often recommend dry lining on battens rather than wet plaster, so the new surface is not sitting on the wall that got wet. The rest is making good: chases after a rewire, reveals after new windows, the wall behind a removed fireplace.
How it runs
Replastering a room in a bungalow or clifftop flat
Thomas comes out and checks every wall and ceiling in the room by tapping it, not just the patch you rang about, because blown plaster rarely stops where the crack does. The quote lists each stage: dust protection, what has to come off, new boarding, the backing coat and the finish coat, beads, making good, and the skip. Every stage is on the same written quote.
A bungalow is easy to work in: level access, a side gate for barrows and bags, and one floor to protect. A flat in a block on the clifftop means carrying everything up a communal stair and keeping the landings clean, so we check parking and any lift with the managing agent. Floors and furniture are sheeted, the room is left usable at the end of each day where we can, and the old plaster and board go with us. If we find damp behind a wall or rotten lath, Thomas photographs it and prices it before any more comes off.
Inside work needs no planning permission, but stripping over half the plaster from an outside wall back to the masonry can be treated as renovating a thermal element. So is re-rendering a whole outside elevation, and the wall then has to meet Approved Document L, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls covers when a new finish needs an application. There is no conservation area in Barton; the authority is New Forest District Council.
Cost
Skim or strip back: what sets a plastering price
We do not give a price per square metre. The area is easy to measure, but it tells you little.
What is on the wall. Tapping tells us most of it. Plaster that sounds solid under a knuckle can take a skim. Plaster that drums has lost its key and comes off back to the background, whether brick, block or lath. That split moves the price more than the size of the room.
The age of the house. Most homes in Barton on Sea were built after the war, so walls are usually gypsum plaster on brick or block and the ceilings are plasterboard. A few older houses have lime plaster, which should be repaired in lime, not gypsum.
Getting in. A bungalow with a side gate wide enough for a barrow, a clifftop flat where every bag goes up a communal stair, and a house extended more than once with mixed walls are each a different job.
Salt and damp. Near the sea, salts in old plaster pull moisture from the air, and the patch keeps coming back until the salty plaster is removed. On a gable facing the south westerlies, we check for rain getting in before replastering.
The finish. Beads, mesh over joints, and making good around sockets and frames all take time.
Ask other quotes whether beads and mesh are included, whether the blown areas are hacked off or skimmed over, and who takes the waste away.
If it has come down
A ceiling sagging or plaster falling off the wall
If a ceiling is bulging or pulling away from the joists, clear the room below and keep people out. Leave it where it is rather than pushing it back. If water is involved, turn off the supply or find the leak before anyone thinks about new plaster.
Then ring; do not use the form for this. A ceiling that has started to come down tends to drop more within days. On the first visit we take down what is loose, make the room safe and find the cause, then price the repair. Our scheduled hours are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If there is no answer, we will ring you back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Salt air, and why the corner beads go first
On the clifftop, or within a kilometre of it, the wall facing the weather in Barton-on-Sea is not doing the same job as the one on the sheltered side of the same house. Salt-laden air keeps a surface damp between showers rather than letting it dry properly, and salt is hard on metal.
That is why the corners on a seaward elevation stain and blister first: ordinary galvanised beads corrode, the rust pushes the render off the edge, and a brown line bleeds through however many times the wall is painted. Stainless steel beads cost more per length and they are the difference between a corner that lasts and one you redo. Ask any quote which beads are in it.
The same logic runs through the rest of the specification on that elevation. A rigid sand and cement render is strong but it has almost no give, so it cracks, and every crack on a weather side is a way in for water that then cannot get back out. A mesh reinforced basecoat with a silicone topcoat moves a little, sheds water and stays breathable enough to dry.
On a Barton-on-Sea house, spend the money on the elevation that takes the weather and be sensible on the sheltered sides. Spreading one budget thinly over the whole house protects none of it. If someone quotes you one specification for all four walls without asking which way the house faces, they have not looked at it properly.
Who you are dealing with
The plasterer you will actually meet
Our base is in Boscombe, which puts Barton seven and a half miles down the road. We plaster and skim in the bungalows and clifftop flats of Barton, in Becton, and out to Milford on Sea and Highcliffe.
If outside render needs building control, that is New Forest District Council. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, owned by Thomas Hannen, who comes to see the room and prices it personally. A verified Checkatrade customer gave us 10 out of 10. The visit is free of charge, and so is the written quote with each line itemised. Before you book a visit in Barton on Sea, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Barton on Sea?
Most repairs in Barton on Sea 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 Barton on Sea |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Barton on Sea. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Barton on Sea, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Barton on Sea. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Barton on Sea. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Barton on Sea
Why do the render beads rust through on this coast?
Because Barton on Sea sits on the clifftop above the water, and salt gets into everything metal. Salt draws moisture, so the wall never dries fully between showers, and corrosion starts at a cut edge or a fixing head and works inwards. A steel bead behind a thin top coat swells as it rusts and pushes the render off in a straight line. Stainless or plastic beads and stainless fixings are the answer.
Why do black spots appear along our bungalow ceiling edge?
That perimeter is the coldest surface in the room, and in a bungalow it always will be. With 42.0% of Barton on Sea built single storey, every ceiling has a cold loft directly above it, and where insulation thins out at the eaves warm damp air condenses on the plaster. Replastering hides it for a season and it returns. Sort the insulation and the ventilation first, then decorate.
What do you look at before pricing a re-render here?
The edges first. Beads, verges, window and door reveals and the bottom two courses, because this close to the sea that is where failure begins. Then I tap across the elevation for hollow areas, check whether the render has been painted with something that traps moisture, and look at where the rainwater goods discharge. The south west face gets measured properly. Sheltered sides often need nothing at all.
What did the 1960s builders plaster onto in Barton?
Blockwork with a browning coat on it, in most cases. Over half the town, 53.4%, was built between 1945 and 1982, and the late fifties and early sixties alone account for 25.1%, so that construction is the local default. Ceilings are plasterboard fixed with nails, which lift over time and telegraph through the paint. We fix the boards back to the joists properly before anything is skimmed.
Is midwinter a bad time to render on the clifftop?
It is the hardest time. The exposed elevation faces south west into the weather, and on the clifftop a wall can be rewetted before a coat has cured. Silicone systems need a dry, frost free window to go off properly, and a rushed top coat in January shows up as patchy colour by spring. We watch the forecast and open only what we can finish.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Barton on Sea
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Barton on Sea, and the other trades we offer in Barton on Sea itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Barton on Sea
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 New Milton Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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Tell us the address and which wall is giving trouble. We will come out, look at it inside and out, and put an itemised price in writing.