Plastering in Boldre
Skimming, ceilings, lime work and external render across Boldre, Pilley and SO41. Free visit, itemised written quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Inside a Boldre house, plastering is plastering and nobody needs to know about it. Outside is where this parish is different from anywhere else we work, because the National Park sets the rules on what you are allowed to put on a wall. Worth five minutes before you decide.
Three jobs make up most of what we are asked for out here. A ceiling or a room that has never been touched since the house was built and now wants skimming. A patch of render on the shaded side of the house that is cracked, green and lifting.
Or a loft room, an outbuilding or a garage being turned into something useful, where the boarding and finishing is the last third of the job and usually the part nobody costed. We come out from Bournemouth, and the site visit is free, with an itemised price in writing before anything starts.
The work
North walls under the trees never dry out
Skimming rooms in the newer houses. Most of the housing in the parish went up from the eighties onward, which means plasterboard walls on dot and dab, a tape and joint finish and a thin skim over the top. Those rooms are quick: flatten the joints, seal, and put two passes of finish coat on with a trowel. Where the boards were never skimmed at all, and a fair few were not, a skim is the single cheapest thing you can do to a tired room. Artex ceilings from the same era either take a skim after sealing, or get overboarded where the texture is deep.
A smaller number of houses in the lanes are solid walled brick with no cavity, lime plaster on the masonry or on lath, and lath and plaster ceilings above. On those, gypsum is the wrong answer. A solid wall has to stay breathable, so it takes a lime backing coat and a lime finish, and a ceiling with sound lath can often be secured back to the joists and skimmed rather than pulled down. Where you tap a wall and get a hollow note, the finish has already blown off the brick and filler will not bring it back.
Render on the shaded elevations. Half of this parish sits under tree cover, and the north and west walls barely see the sun between October and March. They stay damp, they go green, and paint put straight over that growth is off again in two years, taking a layer of render with it. The order matters: kill and clean the growth first, let the wall dry, then cut out and patch anything hollow in a scratch coat and a topcoat. If a whole elevation is going, it is a mesh basecoat, a primer and a silicone thin coat or a monocouche, with a bell cast bead at the base so water drips clear instead of running back under it.
Loft rooms are common out here, where extending outwards is harder than going up into the roof. Plasterboard fixed to the rafters, scrim and tape at every junction, a stop bead where the slope meets the window reveal, and the finish floated on in two passes. What decides whether it cracks, and whether it grows mould in February, is not the plaster at all but what is behind it: insulation with a proper air gap above and a vapour layer on the warm side, which is a ventilation question, and Approved Document F is the standard for it.
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. Furniture is moved and sheeted before anything comes off the wall, and the old plaster leaves with us. What happens inside your own house is not development, and there is no conservation area over Boldre itself. Outside is a different matter, because your planning authority is the New Forest National Park Authority rather than the district council.
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 cottage on a lane with nowhere to stand but the verge, a modern house with a drive to park on, and a converted outbuilding at the end of a long gravel track 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 fifteen miles round, so this is usually next day. Out here the ceiling that lets go is most often the one under a bathroom or a cold loft, so if you can get to the stopcock, turn the water off and get a bucket under it before you ring.
Worth knowing
Your planning authority here is the National Park, not the district
Boldre sits inside the New Forest National Park, so anything that needs permission goes to the National Park Authority rather than to the district council, and permitted development is narrower here than it is a few miles down the road. On our trade the one that catches people is cladding.
In a National Park you cannot add render, pebbledash, timber, tile or stone to the outside of a house as permitted development, even though the same work would be automatic in most of Bournemouth. Repairing render that is already on the wall is maintenance and is not caught by any of that. Putting render onto a wall that has always been bare brick is, and that is an application rather than a phone call.
So the thing to settle early is whether you are repairing or changing. If you are repairing, we can get on with it. If you are changing how an elevation looks, check the address on the Authority's interactive property map first, which will also tell you whether the building is listed, and there are eleven listed entries in this parish.
Their heritage and conservation guidance sets out what they look at, and on a listed building the consent reaches inside the house as well, so a lath and plaster ceiling is part of that conversation too. None of it makes the work harder to do. It moves the timetable, and it is far cheaper to find out at the quote stage than with a scaffold already standing.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Boldre, Pilley, Bull Hill, Portmore, South Baddesley, Lymington and the rest of SO41. 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
Boldre questions we get asked
Which authority handles planning applications for Boldre?
The New Forest National Park Authority rather than the district council, because the parish sits inside the park boundary. That matters for anything changing how a building looks from outside, since design scrutiny applies to what is visible. There are eleven listed entries in the parish and no conservation area of its own. A like for like repair to an unlisted house is not something you need to apply for.
Most of Boldre is eighties built. What is behind the skim?
Plasterboard, in the main. About 32.1% of the housing here dates from the 1980s and 42.9% from between 1983 and 2008, so boarded ceilings and dry lined walls are what we open up most often. The cracks that worry people usually run dead straight along a taped joint, which is board movement rather than anything structural. Over skimming the whole surface hides the joint instead of chasing each crack.
Can one house in a terrace be rendered on its own?
One house on its own is fine, and it is a common job here, with 29.9% of Boldre's homes in terraces. The work stops at the party line, so we form a clean vertical stop bead there rather than feathering new render into the neighbour's. Matching the existing colour and texture is the harder part, because weathered render never matches a fresh mix exactly. We agree the finish before starting.
Why is only the south west wall in poor condition?
Because that is the elevation carrying the weather in this parish. Wind driven rain works at the edges and the openings, not at the middle of a sound surface, so the reveals, the verge and the corners go first while the sheltered walls look untouched. We quote the elevation that needs doing. Wrapping the whole house when one face has failed is work brought forward for no reason.
Do you work out to Boldre through the winter?
Internal work carries on all year, and Boldre is 15.0 miles from the yard, which is a normal run for us. External render is the part that waits, because a top coat needs a dry, frost free spell to cure and this side of the forest catches the weather off the water. We book inside work for the winter months and the render for a settled stretch.
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Plastering and rendering near Boldre
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