Plastering in Burley
Render, lime work and skimming across Burley and BH24, priced after we have looked at both sides of the wall.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Plaster in a Burley cottage usually lets go because the wall behind it is wet. Rain driven off the open forest gets in round the windows and at the bottom of the wall, so that is where the plaster inside goes soft first. Stop the water, let the wall dry, and new plaster will stay put.
Burley plastering covers salty walls, lets and shops being put back into use, and failing render. A wall inside has gone soft and salty at skirting height and the paint is lifting. A cottage, a let or a shop needs its walls and ceilings put right before it goes back into use. Or the render outside has hairlined, gone green and started coming off in patches.
We look at both sides of the same wall, because inside and outside are usually the same story here. Sound the plaster by hand, check the render for hollow areas and cracking at the openings, and work out where water is getting in before anything is quoted. Then you get an itemised written price. Where a repair will do we quote a repair, and we would rather tell you a wall needs a season to dry than put a finish over a wet one.
The work
A dead flat wall looks wrong next to old joinery
Render, where it is letting water through to the plaster. Hollow and cracked areas are cut out and made good in a matching mix. A full elevation goes on as a primer, a mesh-reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat, K render or monocouche topcoat, with a bell cast at the bottom so water is thrown clear of the brickwork. For the outside walls, see rendering in Burley.
Old cottage walls. The older buildings in Burley are solid walled with no cavity, so they have always dried out through their own surface. Those get a haired lime backing coat and a lime finish inside, and lime render in a scratch coat and topcoat outside, not sand and cement and not board on dot and dab. We keep the gentle unevenness, because a dead flat modern finish in an old room looks wrong next to the joinery.
Ceilings: cracked board joints, textured coatings nobody wants, and lath ceilings that have begun to sag. Overboarding and skimming where the existing ceiling is sound and firmly fixed, taking it down where it is not, and repairing a lath ceiling from above where enough key survives.
Tea rooms, shops and let cottages have to look right and cannot close for long, so that work is planned around the season and around bookings. A kitchen or a servery wants a flat, sound background for tiling or a wipeable paint, and we finish to what is going on top rather than to what looks good bare.
Outbuildings, stables and garages: rendering blockwork outside in a scratch coat and a render coat, boarding out on stud inside and finishing in tape and joint or a full skim, and making good where a building is changing use. It is worth getting the backing coat right in an unheated building, because that is where condensation shows up first. After a leak, a rewire or new windows, patching well is a skill, and it saves replastering a wall that is otherwise sound.
How it runs
Plastering an old cottage or a newer house, room by room
Let us know which rooms need doing and what the plaster is up to. Thomas taps the walls over, checks for damp and hollow patches, and writes the price himself. On the quote: protection, stripping loose plaster, any boarding, the backing coat, the skim, beads and waste. You deal with one company for the plastering.
Dust sheets go down and the room is prepared before a bag is opened. Floors, stairs and doorways are protected, and mixing is done outside. On a lane with nowhere to park, the van is unloaded and moved. Rubble goes out bagged, and the room is left swept every evening. On an older solid wall we use lime plaster so the wall can still dry. If the wall is wet behind the plaster, we look at the render outside too, and you get photographs and a price before the plan changes.
Ordinary replastering needs no permission. Outside, like for like render repair is maintenance and a change of finish may not be, as Planning Portal sets out. Boundaries follow properties, not the village sign, so check your address on the National Park property map. Where the building is listed, the inside is protected too, and stripping historic plaster needs listed building consent. Taking a whole elevation back to the brickwork brings Approved Document L into it, and building control has to be told.
Cost
Why one room costs more to plaster than another
A room is not priced by its square metres. What is behind the surface decides it. Sound or hollow. Plaster that is still stuck takes a skim. Plaster that sounds hollow is taken off, and a backing coat of bonding, browning or hardwall is floated and ruled level before the skim, which means a second visit once it has dried.
The wall itself. A cottage with solid walls may need lime rather than gypsum so moisture can escape. A newer house may be plasterboard, where a damaged board is cut out and the joints taped.
Damp. Plaster that keeps failing on an outside wall usually means water coming through the render or the pointing. Fixing the plaster alone will not last, so we say so on the quote.
Outside work. Render is priced on the platform as much as the material: a tower where the wall is low, a scaffold on anything two storeys up.
Getting in. A cottage on a lane or a shop in Burley with no parking means more carrying, in and out.
Get each quote to say whether it covers a backing coat or just a skim, new beads or old, and removal of the waste.
If it has let go
A ceiling that has dropped after a leak
If a ceiling is sagging or has come down at one end, or plaster has bulged after a leak, keep the room shut and people out, and if water has got near a light fitting, turn that circuit off at the fuse board.
Phone us, because the form is too slow for this. Plastering is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm; leave word if we do not answer and we will ring back as soon as we can. We take down what is loose and make the room safe. If the wall behind is wet through, the way in is usually the render outside, so we look at both faces of that wall rather than putting a new finish over a wet one.
One local thing
Damp plaster by a Burley window usually starts outside
Burley sits high and open with the forest around it and the coast about ten kilometres to the south west, which is the direction the weather comes from. Rain here is driven at walls, not dropped on them, and that is why plaster on the weather side of a Burley house so often blows round the windows. A traditional sand and cement render outside is strong but rigid, and rigid coats crack.
Once a hairline opens at the corner of a window, driven rain gets behind the render and cannot get back out. The wall stays wet, the plaster inside turns soft and salty, and a hard frost lifts the render in plates. Look for fine cracks spreading from the corners of openings outside, and a damp tide mark on the reveal inside.
So the outside gets fixed before that wall is replastered inside. On a modern wall that means a render that moves, with the mesh doubled at the corners of openings and a drip under the cills. On an old solid wall it means lime on both faces, with lime plaster inside so the wall can keep drying. Burley is a conservation area, so a change of finish outside is worth checking before anything is ordered.
Who you are dealing with
Plastering in Burley and the villages towards Ringwood
We plaster in Burley and across BH24, out through Bransgore and Thorney Hill, and over to Ringwood, Bisterne and Sopley. Burley is 8.8 miles from our Boscombe base, and building control is New Forest District Council's job.
The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The rooms are seen and priced by Thomas Hannen, the owner. Checkatrade carries a verified customer's 10 out of 10. The visit is free, and the itemised written quote is too. Before you book a visit in Burley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Burley?
Most repairs in Burley 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 Burley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Burley. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Burley Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Burley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Burley
Who decides what our render can look like in Burley?
The New Forest National Park Authority rather than the district council, and Burley has its own conservation area on top of that. Inside a conservation area appearance is controlled: putting back the same render in the same finish is maintenance, but changing the material, the texture or the colour is not, and that conversation happens before anything is ordered. There are seven listed entries in the village, and those are stricter again.
Why does sand and cement render crack on exposed walls here?
Because it is rigid and the wall behind it is not. Burley stands 9.9km inland with its weather face to the south west, so walls get long spells of driven rain and then dry out again. A hard cement coat has nowhere to put that movement, so it cracks at the corners and around the openings and then holds water behind itself. A mesh reinforced silicone system flexes and sheds instead.
Does nutrient neutrality hold up a plastering job here?
Not a plastering or rendering job. The Solent nutrient rules bite only where a scheme adds overnight accommodation, so they catch a loft conversion or an annexe and leave a re-render, a re-skim or a ceiling alone. If the plastering is the tail end of a conversion that adds a bedroom, the National Park raises it at the application stage, long before we turn up. We price the plastering either way.
What should I look at on the render before ringing you?
Knock across the wall with your knuckles and listen for the change from solid to hollow, then work out where the hollow area stops. Look at the bottom edge for a bell cast that has been rendered over, and at the sills and reveals, because on a south west facing wall in Burley that is where water gets in first. Photograph the cracks with something alongside them for scale.
Who comes out to look at it?
Thomas Hannen comes out himself. Burley is a shade about nine miles from our base, and the visit costs you nothing. He measures the walls, checks what is behind the existing finish and writes the quote itemised, so the render, the beads, the access and the waste sit on separate lines. On a National Park job he will also say whether the Authority needs asking first.
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Plastering near Burley
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Silicone, cement or lime: which render? Cracked render: which cracks matter Hollow-sounding wall: blown plaster or dot and dabEverything we do in Ringwood Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Plaster blowing round the windows?
Tell us the address and what you can see. The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote.