Plastering in Blandford Forum
Lime plaster, lath ceilings, cornice repair, skimming and render across Blandford Forum and DT11. Free visit, itemised written quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In Blandford Forum the answer usually turns on which end of town you are in. A house in the Georgian centre wants lime and repair. A house on the estates wants a skim and a day. Both are ordinary work, and we will tell you which one you have before we price anything.
The calls come in three kinds. A ceiling has cracked, sagged or dropped a lump of plaster on the landing. A wall is blowing at low level, it has been patched and painted twice, and somebody has already waved a damp survey at you.
Or the room is being changed, a fireplace opened up, a chimney breast out, an old shop flat done up, and the making good is the part nobody has priced. What decides all three is what is behind the paint, and that is a five-minute job to establish with a hand and a hammer. The site visit is free and the price comes in writing.
The work
The 1731 fire decided what is behind your walls
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 here 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 rather than 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 rather than 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 rather than a single sheet of board, and building control has a view.
Terraces are about a third of the housing here and the chimney breast is the job we make good most often. 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 rather than 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.
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 one figure on the back of a card: preparing and protecting the room, any board or backing coat, the beads, the finish coat, making good and disposal on separate lines. If something turns up behind the old finish that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on. Plastering inside an ordinary house is not development. Building control comes into it when a wall comes out, a garage becomes a room or a separating floor is rebuilt. Listed status and the conservation area change the answer again, and that is the section below.
Cost
What decides the price
No rate per square metre, because the square metres are the easiest thing to measure and the least useful thing to know. A sound wall that only wants a skim is a different job from one where the backing coat has blown and has to come off back to the masonry. A flat up a shared stair over a shop in the centre, a terrace with no side access at all, and a house on the edge of town with a drive to park on are three different jobs before we start. Ask any quote whether beads and making good are in the figure.
If it has come down
A ceiling down, or plaster blown off the wall
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that has cracked and dropped goes to the front of the queue. We are sixteen miles up the road, so this is usually next day. In the older houses the ceiling that lets go is nearly always lath and plaster, and it comes down in one heavy piece with a century of dust on it, so clear the room and shut the door.
Worth knowing
Listed status here reaches inside the house, not just the front
There are over two hundred listed entries in and around this town, which is a lot for a place this size, and it means a town-centre address being listed is a fair bet rather than a long shot. The part that catches people is that listed building consent covers the inside as well as the outside.
Taking down a lath and plaster ceiling, stripping lime plaster back to the brick, or swapping a run cornice for a length of coving are all changes to the building, not decorating. Repairing like for like in the same material is normally maintenance and needs nothing. The moment the material changes, ring the council first. Nobody enjoys that conversation after the ceiling is already in bags.
The conservation area on this patch is the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area, so whether it applies to you depends on the address rather than on the town name, and the council holds the boundary. Inside one, what is protected is what the building looks like from outside: repairing render like for like is maintenance, while changing the finish or the colour on a front elevation is worth a phone call before you order materials.
Either way, settle it before a scaffold goes up. We price the lime work as its own line so you can see exactly what the heritage part of the job costs, and we will put the specification in writing so you have something to send in with an application.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Blandford Forum, Blandford St Mary, Bryanston, Pimperne, Charlton Marshall and the rest of DT11. 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
Blandford Forum questions we get asked
Blandford has hundreds of listed buildings. Does that include ours?
There are 209 listed entries in and around the town, from the Ryves Almshouses in the Market Place outwards, so it is a fair question to ask before planning anything. Listing attaches to a specific address, not to a street or a terrace. If yours is on the list, consent can reach the internal finishes as well as the front, and lime rather than gypsum is usually where it lands.
Are we inside the Blandford St Mary and Bryanston area?
The Blandford St Mary and Bryanston Conservation Area is the designation that comes up around here, and it controls appearance. Inside it, replacing a finish exactly as it was counts as maintenance, while changing the material, texture or colour is something Dorset Council will want to consider first. Check your address against the boundary rather than guessing from how close you are to it.
Our terrace predates 1919. Can gypsum go on those walls?
Not on the backing, no. Around 18.9% of Blandford Forum's houses were built before 1919 and 31.1% of the stock is terraced, which means a great many solid walls with no cavity behind them. Those walls move moisture out through the plaster. A gypsum backing traps it, goes soft at the base and blows within a couple of winters. Lime backing with a compatible finish is the way to do it.
The flat is above a shop. Who orders the work?
Usually the freeholder or the managing agent, not the occupier. Flats and maisonettes make up 23.7% of Blandford Forum, and in a converted building the external walls and the structure normally sit outside your demise even when the damage shows on your ceiling. Internal finishes within the flat are generally yours to deal with. Read the lease before booking, because paying for someone else's wall is hard to recover.
When in the year should lime work be done?
Spring to early autumn, if there is any choice in it. Lime carbonates slowly and will not tolerate frost while it is still green, so a coat put on in December can be ruined overnight. In a town with this much protected fabric the specification is often lime whether you wanted it or not, which makes the calendar part of the plan. We book that work early in the season.
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Tell us the address and what the wall or ceiling is doing. We will come out, look properly, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.