Plastering in Blandford Forum

Lime plaster in the old centre. The middle of the town went up in one go after the fire of 1731, so a whole street can be the same age and the same build: solid brick walls, no cavity, lime plaster laid straight onto the masonry or onto lath.

Nearly a fifth of the housing in Blandford Forum predates 1919. A solid wall has to stay breathable, so it gets a lime backing coat and a lime finish. Gypsum skimmed over old lime looks fine for a winter and then blows, and dabbing plasterboard onto a damp solid wall traps the water where you cannot see it. If you tap along a wall and the note goes hollow in patches, that is the finish already off the brick.

Lath ceilings, and cornices. An old ceiling holds up on the plaster squeezed between the laths, and when those nibs shear the ceiling sags. Where the lath is sound we can fix the ceiling back to the joists and skim it, which keeps the original and the run cornice with it. Where it is beyond that it comes down and goes back in plasterboard with tape and joint. Cornices we take a section from, cut a profile to it, and run the new length in situ so the repair disappears instead of sitting proud. Worth doing properly in a town where the mouldings are half the room, and with over two hundred listed entries here it is often a consent question as well.

Nearly a quarter of the homes are flats, and a good share of them sit over the businesses in the centre. Everything comes up a shared stair, so the stair gets protected and the waste goes down it by hand, never out of a window. The floor between two flats is a fire separating element, so a ceiling that comes down goes back as a proper build-up, not a single sheet of board, and building control has a view.

Terraces are about a third of the housing in Blandford Forum and in a terrace the chimney breast is the usual thing to make good. The stack above still has to be held up, so it goes through building control for the support, and where the breast is on a shared wall it is notifiable to your neighbour under the Party Wall Act, which is a letter, not a battle, but it wants doing in advance. You are left with a scarred wall and a new reveal, so it normally ends as a full skim rather than a patch that shows in low sun.

Out towards the edges of town it is a different century and different rules. Post war and seventies houses are browning or hardwall as a backing coat, a bonding coat on patches and PVA where the suction is high, with an artex ceiling to overboard or scrape. Outside, painted render and pebbledash on the later housing is cut back to sound material and keyed with a scratch coat, or stripped and recoated over a mesh basecoat with a primer and a silicone thin coat. On the old brick it is lime render and limewash, patched in the same material, because sand and cement is harder than the wall it is stuck to and cracks along the join every time. For the outside walls, see rendering in Blandford Forum.

Room size is easy to measure and tells you little. Skim or strip. A sound wall takes a skim. Blown backing coat is hacked off right back to the brick, a longer and much dustier job.

The building. A large part of the housing in Blandford Forum was built in the 1970s and the years that followed, with plasterboard walls and ceilings that can often be skimmed straight over. The Georgian houses in the centre are more likely to have lime on lath, which needs lime repairs or careful replacement.

Ceilings. A sagging lath and plaster ceiling has to come down and be boarded and skimmed, and taking it down is heavy work.

Carrying. A flat above a shop, reached by a shared stair, adds carrying time. So does a terrace with no side access, where waste goes out through the front door. Parking in the centre can mean unloading and moving the van.

Drying time. Lime and backing coats need time to dry between coats, and a wall that has been wet needs longer still.

Check with any rival whether they are quoting a skim or a full replaster, whether the beads and making good are in, and how long they allow for drying.

Our base in Boscombe is 16.8 miles from Blandford Forum. Plastering takes us into the town, Blandford St Mary, Bryanston, Pimperne, Charlton Marshall and the rest of DT11, where Dorset Council handles building control. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Blandford Forum, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen, who owns it, comes round to see the walls and ceilings and prices the job in person. We have a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade, and the visit is on us, as is the written, itemised quote.

Most repairs in Blandford Forum 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.