Plastering in Downton
Walls, ceilings, lime work and render across Downton and the SP5 villages. We come out, look properly, and put a price in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Plastering in a Downton house is usually a cracked ceiling, a wall that has blown behind the wallpaper or a chimney breast to make good after a stove went in. Each is one room at a time, not a whole house, and a day or two of work. We will tell you which of those you have got before we price anything.
Downton jobs usually start with a ceiling, a hollow wall or a stripped room. A ceiling has started to crack or drop, and nobody can say whether the old lath and plaster is giving up or the room has simply moved. A wall sounds hollow when you knock it and the paper has stopped sticking to it. Or a room has been stripped back, the coving is off and the artex has gone, and it needs to be flat and ready to decorate by a date that is already in the diary.
We come out, tap the walls and ceilings over, lift a loose corner where there is one, and say which of the three it is. Downton runs from cottages older than the plaster inside them to post-war estate houses on the edges, and the right repair is a different repair in each.
The work
On the older cottages the backing coat is the whole job
Re-skimming walls and ceilings. The everyday job. We prepare the surface, PVA where the background is porous, and lay two coats of finish plaster on with a trowel so the wall is flat and ready to paint. A bedroom ceiling is a day. A whole room, walls and ceiling together, is usually two. It only works over something sound, so if the old plaster is blown we will say so. Skimming over it only buys you a year.
Blown walls taken back and re-plastered. Where the old coat has let go it comes off, the brick is cleaned back, and a backing coat of bonding or hardwall is floated on and ruled flat before the finish coat. Browning where the background is porous enough to take it. On the older cottages in the Borough and the lanes behind it the backing coat decides the whole job: a gypsum render coat on a solid wall still carrying damp will blow a second time, so those go back in lime and stay breathable.
There are a lot of lath and plaster ceilings in the middle of Downton. Where the lath is sound and only the surface has crazed we pull the loose material and re-skim. Where the plaster has parted from the lath and the ceiling is bellying down it comes down and goes back as plasterboard fixed to the joists, taped at the board edges and skimmed over the lot. In a listed cottage that is a conversation to have first, because stripping original lath can need consent, and other permissions you may need covers it.
Dry lining, stud work and boarding out. Plasterboard on dabs where a wall is too far gone to patch, stud partitions where a long room is being split, and boarding out a chimney breast after a liner or a stove. Every external corner and window reveal gets an angle bead or a stop bead, because that is the edge the hoover and the pushchair find first.
Outside it is patch repairs where a panel has cracked and gone hollow, and full re-renders. Sand and cement over a scratch coat where that is what is already on the building, or a mesh-reinforced basecoat with a silicone thin coat, K render or monocouche where the elevation takes weather. A bell cast bead at the base throws water clear of the wall instead of into it. Pebbledash is patched and matched, not replaced wholesale, where only a section has failed.
Then the making good: cracks around door heads and window openings, patching after a leak has dried out, artex skimmed over or overboarded, and what a kitchen or bathroom fitter leaves behind. New plaster wants three to seven days to dry, longer in a cold house, then a watered-down mist coat before you decorate properly.
How it runs
Replastering a room, from dust sheets to the last skim
Thomas comes out, taps the walls and ceilings to find what is hollow, and looks for the cause of any damp before talking about plaster. The quote lists preparation, hacking off, the backing coat, plasterboard and beads, the skim and making good, each on its own line. The work itself is covered by that same quote.
Rooms are cleared or the furniture is sheeted, floors are covered and doorways sealed against dust. In Downton's older cottages the walls are often solid brick with lime plaster, which should be repaired in lime so the wall can still breathe, because gypsum on those walls holds damp. The post-war houses and bungalows are usually plasterboard or gypsum on block and take a skim well. Rubble is bagged and taken away as we go. If a lath ceiling turns out to be worse than it looked, we stop, send you a photo and a price, and wait for your say.
Inside, none of this needs permission. Outside, renewing existing render is maintenance, but rendering or cladding a wall that was never rendered may need an application to Wiltshire Council, particularly in a conservation area, and it is worth checking whether your address is in one. Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that line sits. On a listed building the plaster inside counts as well, so we check before anything comes off.
Cost
Skim, hack off or lime: what sets a plastering price
We do not price plastering by the square metre. What the wall needs. A sound wall that only wants a skim is a fraction of the work of one hacked off to brick and built back up in a backing coat. We tap every wall over before quoting to find out which.
The age of the house. A post-war bungalow emptied for decorating is quick to work in. A brick terrace on The Borough with the furniture still in it, lath and plaster ceilings and uneven walls is slower, and lime work needs longer between coats.
Ceilings. An old lath ceiling that has sagged can be overboarded with plasterboard and skimmed, or taken down, which is messier but shows any rotten joist.
Beads and making good. New angle beads on every corner, making good round sockets and switches, and dust sealing in a home still being lived in all add time.
Outside work. Render needs a tower or scaffold priced on its own line, because the work at height rules say what platform it needs.
Ask any other quote whether it is a skim or a hack off and replaster, whether the older walls get lime or gypsum, and whether the beads, making good and dust protection are included.
If it has come down
A ceiling that is sagging or has come down
If a ceiling is bulging, cracking or dropping lumps of plaster, keep everyone out of that room and move what you can from underneath. If water is involved, turn off the lights on that circuit. Ring, and do not use the form for this.
On the first visit anything loose comes down, the ceiling is propped if needed, and we find whether a leak from a bath, a tank or the roof is the cause, because there is no point plastering until the water has stopped. Then we price the repair. Our booked hours are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If you need us urgently, call, and when we miss it we get straight back to you once we can.
Worth knowing
Plaster that keeps blowing on a weather wall
Plaster that keeps blowing on a side or rear wall that takes the weather is what usually starts people in Downton thinking about rendering the outside. Check which side of the conservation area boundary you are on first. Inside it, the permitted development right to render a brick or flint wall that has never been rendered is switched off, so it needs a planning application, and that is worth knowing before you book the work around a holiday.
Repairs are the easier half. Renewing render already on the building is maintenance, as long as what goes back matches what was there. On the older cottages the existing coat is often soft and sandy for a reason: it lets the wall dry outwards, and that is what keeps the lime plaster inside sound. We take a piece off, see what it is, and put the same back. For the outside walls, see rendering in Downton.
Who you are dealing with
Plasterers working across the SP5 villages
We plaster in Downton, Charlton All Saints, Morgan's Vale, Redlynch, Woodfalls and the villages up and down the Avon valley. Our base is in Boscombe, 18.4 miles from Downton, and Wiltshire Council is the authority.
The business is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales with company number 15471719, owned by Thomas Hannen, who looks at the walls and prices the plastering himself. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's rating of 10 out of 10. You are not charged for the visit or for the written quote, and the quote lists every item. Before you book a visit in Downton, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Downton?
Most repairs in Downton 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 Downton |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Wiltshire Council is the planning authority for Downton. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Downton Conservation Area. It covers part of Downton, so check whether your street is inside it. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Downton. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Downton. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Downton
Downton is in Wiltshire. Who handles the planning side?
Wiltshire Council handles the planning side. Downton is the Wiltshire end of our patch, so the conservation area here and any listed building consent go through them rather than through Dorset or the New Forest. There are 107 listed entries in the village, the Manor House and the Church of St Laurence among them, so it is worth checking your own address on the list before settling on a new finish.
Our Downton cottage is pre-1900. What does that mean inside?
Solid walls, lath and plaster ceilings, and lime throughout. A lot of the village went up before 1900, so a good deal of the plaster here is original haired lime on riven laths. Those walls have no cavity and no membrane; they dry through the plaster itself. Put gypsum on them and the moisture stops dead at the back of it.
Should we use lime putty or a hydraulic lime?
Which one depends on the wall and where it sits. For internal work on a Downton cottage, lime putty with hair in the backing coat matches what is already on the wall and stays soft enough to move with it. Outside, or anywhere taking driven rain, a natural hydraulic lime sets harder and faster and copes better. Mixing the two systems on one elevation is what causes the trouble.
Does the River Avon designation stop us converting the loft?
Not normally, if the bedroom is for your own household. The River Avon catchment rules are aimed at a new dwelling, an annexe or a holiday let, so a loft bedroom in your own house is not normally caught and a replastered dining room never is. If it might be let, ask Wiltshire Council well before anyone boards anything. It is a planning matter rather than a plastering one, and it changes nothing about how we price the work.
How much of the house do you need at once?
One room at a time and a clear run to the front door. Downton has terraces, semis, bungalows and detached houses, so the answer moves with the layout: in a terrace everything comes through the hall and gets protected, and in a bungalow we can often work off the back. We agree at the visit which rooms will be out of use and in what order.
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Plastering near Downton
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Get a price for your Downton plastering
Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We will come out, tap it over and put an itemised price in writing. No charge, and no obligation.