Plastering in Corfe Mullen
Ceiling skims, cracked board joints, textured coatings taken back, garage conversions, dry lining and render across Corfe Mullen, priced in writing after a free visit.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most plastering in Corfe Mullen is ceiling work, and most of it is a straight skim rather than a strip out. The houses here were built with plasterboard ceilings nailed to the joists, so what fails is the joint between the boards and the fixings holding them, not the plaster itself. Screw the boards back tight, tape the joints and skim, and a tired ceiling becomes a flat one in a day.
Three things get us called out here. A ceiling with a crack running dead straight across it, which is a board joint opening up rather than the house moving. A textured finish that has been up since the place was built and that everybody has finally had enough of. And render on a gable or a dormer cheek that has crazed and started to sound hollow when you tap it.
All three are routine for us and none of them needs the drama some people attach to them. We are only up the road, the site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. If one room is genuinely all that needs doing, that is what the quote will say.
The work
Nailed boards, and the little domes they push up
Ceilings, and there are a lot of them. A third of the homes in Corfe Mullen are bungalows, which means the ceiling is the largest single surface in the house and there is no floor above to work from. On this stock the boards were nailed rather than screwed, so nails work loose and push a little dome through the finish, and the joints between boards open into a straight hairline crack. Skimming over that without re-fixing it buries the problem, so the boards go back tight with screws, the joints are taped, and then two coats of finish plaster go on with a trowel. Where the boards themselves are sagging or water damaged, fresh plasterboard over the top is quicker and cleaner than pulling a ceiling down.
Textured coatings. Very common on ceilings of this age, since a third of the village went up in the 1970s and early 1980s. Shallow and stuck fast, we skim straight over it. Heavy swirls get knocked back first, and a ceiling somebody has patched round a light fitting is better overboarded. Anything textured applied before 2000 can contain a small amount of asbestos, so it is sampled rather than sanded.
Behind the paper on most of these houses is a blockwork inner leaf with a backing coat of browning or hardwall and a thin finish over it. Where it is sound we prepare it, seal it and skim it. Where a patch sounds hollow it has blown off the block and comes off, and a backing coat of bonding or hardwall goes back first, floated out and ruled level before the finish coat, which wants a few days to dry before a mist coat and any decorating.
Garage conversions, extensions and loft rooms are the commonest new work on this stock, because the houses have the space around them and the layouts to suit it. Board on dot and dab where there is blockwork to fix to, board on stud where there is not, tape and joint or a full skim, and an angle bead on every external corner with a stop bead at each window reveal. On a garage conversion the insulation goes in behind the board, which is worth deciding before the boards are ordered rather than after.
Render is gables, dormer cheeks and the odd full elevation, mostly sand and cement and some of it pebbledash. Local damage is cut out and patched; a full elevation comes off and goes back as a mesh reinforced basecoat under a silicone thin coat, or a monocouche where the colour runs through the material, with a bell cast bead at the base.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
The quote is itemised rather than one figure: what comes off, the beads, the backing coat, the finish coat, the making good and the waste on separate lines. Nothing we do inside needs planning permission, and with no conservation area over Corfe Mullen and a single listed entry in the whole village, an external finish is normally your own choice here; Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that line falls. Building control is the one to watch instead, because turning a garage or a loft into a room is building work and the insulation behind the plasterboard has to satisfy the inspector before anything is boarded over. Dorset Council for both.
Cost
What decides the price of a plastering job
No rate per square metre. What sits behind the finish decides it: sound plaster takes a skim, a hollow wall comes off and needs a backing coat. A detached bungalow with a drive and a side gate, a semi on one of the closes with the van out on the road, and a rear extension reached only through the kitchen are three different jobs. Outside, render brings a tower or a scaffold into the price, a bungalow gable off a tower and a two storey elevation off a scaffold, and the work at height rules are why that is its own line. A full re-render counts as renovating a thermal element, so Approved Document L and building control take an interest.
If it has started to come down
A sagging ceiling, or plaster off the wall
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that has begun to bow, or plaster coming off a wall in sheets, goes to the front of the queue. We are about seven miles up the road, so a ceiling here is usually looked at the same day or the next; in a bungalow clear everything out from underneath, because there is no upstairs floor between you and it.
Worth knowing
The whole village was built at once, and wears out at once
Almost two thirds of the housing in Corfe Mullen went up between the war and the early eighties, and the biggest single block of it in the seventies. That is unusual, and it changes the advice.
Ceilings of that period are all the same construction, boards nailed to joists and finished with a skim or a texture, so they reach the same point at the same time: fixings loosening, joints opening in a line, and a coating that has been touched up round a light fitting once too often. If a neighbour has just had a ceiling done, yours is the same age and the same build, and what they were told will very likely apply to you.
Three things follow from that, and they save real money. Do a ceiling in one piece rather than patching a metre of it, because the rest is the same age and you will be back. Do more than one room in the same visit if you can, since the sheeting up, the mixing station and the tidying are the same whether it is one ceiling or four, and that is where the savings actually sit.
And have any textured coating sampled before anybody sands or scrapes it, because it went on in the years when a small amount of asbestos in the mix was normal. None of that is a reason to hurry. It is a reason to plan it as one job instead of five.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Corfe Mullen, Broadstone, Lytchett Matravers, Wimborne and the BH21 addresses along the Wimborne road, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. Send the postcode if you want to be sure. 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
Corfe Mullen questions we get asked
Everyone in our road has the same cracks. Why is that?
Because the road went up in one go. Corfe Mullen built 62.1% of its housing between 1945 and 1982, and 34.5% of the whole settlement in the 1970s and early 1980s, so the houses share an age, a construction and the same plaster on the same board. They dry, settle and crack to the same timetable. That is a cohort reaching the same point together rather than a house on the move.
Only one building in Corfe Mullen is listed. Does that help?
It makes life simpler. There is a single listed entry in Corfe Mullen and no conservation area at all, so for the great majority of houses the finish on the outside wall is your decision and Dorset Council does not need to see it. That covers a change of render system, a change of colour, or a rendered finish over bare brick. Structural alterations and anything on a boundary are separate questions.
Why does the wall drum when I knock beside the window?
It is plasterboard on dabs with a gap behind it. With 21.4% of Corfe Mullen built between 1983 and 2008, dry lining is common here and that hollow note is normal rather than a defect. What matters is whether the board is still stuck. If it gives under a push, or the sound changes across a patch a metre wide, the dabs have let go and that section comes off.
What exactly is on the written quote before we agree?
Each room or elevation on its own line, the preparation, the number of coats, the beads and scrim, making good round the sockets and skirtings, the waste away and the VAT. Thomas Hannen writes it after the visit and not over the phone. On a Corfe Mullen estate house where the layout repeats down the road we still measure yours, because the extensions and the dry lining are where they differ.
Can a ceiling be done in one day while we are out?
An ordinary sized ceiling, hacked off, boarded and skimmed, is a day for two of us plus drying time. A whole Corfe Mullen bungalow, ceilings and walls together, runs across most of a week because each coat has to go off before the next one can follow. We work room by room so you keep a kitchen and a bedroom in use rather than shutting the house down.
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Get a written price for your Corfe Mullen plastering
Send the postcode and tell us which rooms. We come out, tap the walls and ceilings, and put the price in writing with the days it will take.