Plastering in Bransgore
Ceilings, walls and render across Bransgore and BH23, sounded before they are priced and itemised in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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If the plaster drums when you tap it, a skim will not fix it. A hollow wall or ceiling has let go of the background behind it, and fresh finish over the top comes away with the old. We come out to Bransgore, sound it first and price only what has to come off.
Bransgore houses tend to go wrong at the ceiling joints, under old wallpaper repairs and on rendered gables. A ceiling has opened up in a straight line and nobody wants to paper over it again. A room has been stripped for decorating and the wall underneath is a patchwork of old repairs. Or the render on a gable has crazed and started holding water instead of shedding it. For the outside walls, see rendering in Bransgore.
None of those get better on their own. We come out, sound the walls and ceilings by hand and separate what is tired from what has let go, then put a written price in your hands saying which surfaces are being skimmed, which are coming off, and how long the room is out of use.
The work
We knuckle the whole wall before we quote it
Ceilings. Most of Bransgore went up between the late sixties and the early eighties, and those ceilings are plasterboard fixed to the joists with a scrimmed or taped joint, nearly always with a textured coating over the top.
On these estate houses the fault is usually a crack along a board joint, a ceiling papered twice and bubbling, or artex that has to go before a decorator will touch the room. Overboard and skim is the usual answer, a day a room in most of these houses.
We knuckle the whole wall before we quote it. The estate houses are a block inner leaf floated in browning or bonding with a gypsum finish coat over it. Where a fireplace has been opened up, a chimney breast taken out, a rewire chased in or a bathroom above has leaked, the finish around it has normally blown, and a hollow patch skimmed over is a repair that fails twice. A seventies detached house that has just changed hands is the obvious time for a full job: every room skimmed while it is empty and run in an order that lets the drying keep up with your dates.
Detached houses are over forty per cent of Bransgore and they come with the loft space and the garages people convert. New stud partitions boarded and taped, plasterboard dot and dab onto blockwork where a wall is straight enough for it, and reveals and corners squared up with angle bead and stop bead so the joinery has something true to sit against.
Outside it is gable elevations, garages, outbuildings and the older cottages at the edges of the village: sand and cement that has crazed, pebbledash that is hollow behind and coming off in plates, and cracking that opens at the corners of the windows first. The exposed elevation faces south west, so where a wall is taking weather we go mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat topcoat, which moves rather than cracks, with a bell cast at the bottom so water is thrown clear of the brickwork. Not all of Bransgore is estate housing: close to a fifth of it predates 1919, and the cottages on the lanes are solid wall with lime plaster on lath, needing a breathable backing rather than a gypsum one. A hard modern plaster on a wall that has always dried through its surface traps the water and pushes the next coat off.
How it runs
Replastering a room, from dust sheets to finish coat
Thomas comes out, taps the walls, and looks up at the ceilings. In Bransgore the ceilings are mostly plasterboard from the seventies and eighties, and many carry a textured coating.
Those coatings could contain asbestos until well into the eighties, so a sample is sent for testing before anyone sands or scrapes one, and that is its own line on the quote. The older cottages have lime plaster that needs matching in lime. The written quote gives prep and protection, hacking off, the backing coat, beads, the finish coats, making good and the waste. The room is plastered start to finish under that quote.
Floors and furniture are sheeted, doorways are taped, and the dust is kept to the room being worked on. Rubble and old plaster are bagged and leave with us each day. Rotten lath, a damp wall or failed plasterboard found behind the old surface is photographed and priced separately, so you decide before it is added.
Inside work needs no planning. Bransgore has no conservation area, so on most houses an outside finish is your choice, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls covers the exceptions. On a listed building, stripping historic plaster needs listed building consent. Taking a whole external wall back to brick brings in Approved Document L.
Cost
What makes one plastering job cost more than another
Whether the old plaster stays. Plaster that is sound and well stuck can take a skim. Plaster that sounds hollow when you tap it has to be hacked off, and then it needs a backing coat, time to dry and a second visit for the finish. That is the biggest swing in any plastering price.
Textured ceilings. A lot of ceilings in Bransgore carry a textured coating. If the test comes back clear, it can often be skimmed over once it is scraped and sealed. If it contains asbestos, it is either left sealed and boarded over, or removed by a licensed firm before we start. The test result decides the method.
What the wall is. A seventies blockwork wall takes a bonding coat and a multi-finish skim. An older cottage wall in solid brick wants lime, which goes on in thinner coats and takes longer to cure. Gypsum on a solid wall that needs to breathe traps damp behind it.
How the room is used. An empty room is quicker than a lived-in one. A ceiling means working from a platform over the whole floor.
Ask any other quote whether the ceiling coating has been tested, whether it is a skim or a backing coat and skim, and who takes the waste.
If it has let go
A ceiling cracked along a board joint
If a plasterboard ceiling has cracked and dropped along a joint, or started to bulge after a leak, get everyone out of the room and keep it shut. Do not poke it to see how loose it is.
If water is coming through too, turn off the electrics to that room at the consumer unit. Ring the number, not the form, for anything overhead. Plastering is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and a call that goes to voicemail is returned at the earliest chance. When we arrive we take down or prop the loose section safely, and check the textured coating before it is disturbed. The repair is priced once the leak is fixed.
One local thing
Every other ceiling here has artex on it
Half of Bransgore was built in the stretch when a textured coating went onto almost every ceiling as standard, so that is what sits above the light fitting in one house after another.
Any textured coating put up before 2000 can contain asbestos, and that sets one firm rule: nobody sands it, dry scrapes it or wire brushes it. Not you, not a decorator, not us. If it is being disturbed it gets sampled first, and testing is cheap next to getting it wrong.
There are two clean routes and we will tell you which one your ceiling wants. Overboarding is usually the simpler one: fresh plasterboard screwed through the old surface into the joists, joints taped, then skimmed. Nothing is disturbed and you get a flat ceiling with a proper finish coat on it.
It does drop the ceiling by the thickness of a board, so downlighters and coving have to be thought about first. The other route is sealing the coating and skimming straight over it, which is quicker and only works where it is well stuck and the peaks are not proud. Which one you are in is a five minute check at the survey.
Who you are dealing with
Who you let into your house to plaster
The plasterer's price comes from Thomas Hannen, who owns the business and comes into your house to look at the walls and ceilings himself. Boscombe is 5.6 miles away, and plastering jobs are taken on throughout Bransgore, on the estate roads and out at Hinton, Thorney Hill and Christchurch.
New Forest District Council is responsible for the area. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the company, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, and you can check it before the dust sheets go down. A verified customer gave the firm 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. Nothing is charged for the visit, and the itemised written quote is free too. Before you book a visit in Bransgore, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Bransgore?
Most repairs in Bransgore 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 Bransgore |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Bransgore. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Bransgore, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Bransgore. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Bransgore. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Bransgore
Why would two Bransgore houses need different plastering methods?
Because the village is split between two very different eras. Some 18.2% of the stock predates 1919, meaning solid walls, lath ceilings and lime, while 31.6% went up in the 1970s and early 1980s on block with a sand and cement backing. The finish on top can look identical in both. What sits behind it decides whether we use a breathable backing or a modern browning, and getting that wrong causes a repeat visit.
Is dry lining common in Bransgore, or solid plaster?
Solid, more often than not: only 14.2% of Bransgore was built between 1983 and 2008, so dabbed plasterboard is much less common here than a proper backing coat. That changes how a hollow sound should be read. On a solid backing, drumminess means the plaster has parted company with the brick and that area has to come off, rather than being the normal air gap behind a sheet of board.
Our cottage is old but not listed. Do we need consent?
For external work, generally not: Bransgore has thirteen listed entries and no conservation area of its own, so an unlisted house here is treated as ordinary by New Forest District Council and a change of render or colour normally sits within permitted development. Age on its own does not create a control. It does change the specification though, because an old solid wall still has to breathe whatever the planners say.
Which elevation goes first on a detached house here?
The south west face, because there is nothing beside it to break the weather. Detached houses are 41.3% of Bransgore, and a detached wall gets no shelter from a neighbour the way a semi or a terrace does, so all four elevations weather at their own rate. The exposed one loses its edges and reveals first. That is the face worth spending on while the others can wait.
What happens to the old lime plaster you remove?
It comes off in sheets and it is filthy, so containment matters more than speed. Old lath and lime carries generations of soot and horsehair, and it goes straight into bags at the wall rather than being swept up later. Floors are sheeted, doorways are taped and the bags go out to the van the same day. On the village's older properties we allow proper time for that part.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Bransgore
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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 Highcliffe Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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Want a straight answer on that wall?
Tell us the address and what it is doing. We come out, sound it, and put a written price in your hands.