Plastering and rendering in Everton
Ceilings, walls, dry lining and coastal render across Everton, Hordle and the SO41 villages. We look properly, then price it in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
More of our work in Everton is ceilings than walls. Most houses here are single storey, so every ceiling in the place sits straight under the roof, and a stain, a sag or a hairline map of cracks turns up in the room you are sitting in rather than in a spare bedroom nobody uses.
Three things bring people to the phone. A ceiling has marked or dropped and you want to know whether it is coming down or just needs making good. A wall has been stripped of paper, come up patchy and rough, and you want it flat and ready to paint rather than filled in fifty places.
Or the outside is looking tired, the render has hairline cracks in it and a wall is showing damp inside after the wind has been in the south-west for a week. We come out, tap the walls and ceilings over, get the loft hatch open where the ceiling is involved, and tell you what is actually wrong before anybody talks about a price.
The work
Ceilings take what upstairs takes elsewhere
Ceilings, which is most of it. Better than four in ten homes here are bungalows, so every ceiling sits under the roof and under the loft and takes the punishment that upstairs takes elsewhere. A ceiling with fine cracks over a sound background is prepared and re-skimmed in a day. One sagging away from the joists, or soaked by a tank or a slipped tile, comes down and goes back in plasterboard, taped at the board edges, then a skim over the lot.
Artex and textured coatings. Most of the ceilings we are asked about still carry the swirled coating that came with the house, which for half this village means the late 1950s and 1960s. Flat and stuck fast, we skim straight over it. Deep peaks get overboarded and the new board skimmed. It never gets sanded, because a coating of that age can contain asbestos.
A wall that has lost its paper and its patience gets prepared, PVA'd where it is porous and given two coats of finish plaster with a trowel. Where the old coat is blown and hollow it comes off instead, and a backing coat of bonding or hardwall is floated flat before the finish coat. Blockwork drying out after a leak gets left alone until it is dry, not skimmed to suit a diary. New plaster wants three to seven days before a mist coat goes on, and longer in a cold room.
Anything built here from the eighties on is likely to be dry lining rather than solid plaster, so we patch it the way it was built and put in stud partitions where a long room is split or a bungalow gains an en suite. Sloping ceilings, dormer cheeks and garage conversions get boarded and skimmed, with an angle bead on every external corner and a stop bead where the plaster stops against a frame or a window board, so the new room matches the rest of the house rather than announcing itself.
Two and a half kilometres from the water, the south-west elevation gets the salt and the driven rain and it goes first. Cracked panels over a sound background are cut back and patched to match the texture beside them, whether that is sand and cement or pebbledash. Where a whole wall has gone hollow it comes off and goes back on a mesh-reinforced basecoat under a silicone thin coat, or a monocouche where the colour is carried through the material, with a bell cast bead at the base.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
On permission, Everton is easy. The village sits outside the National Park boundary and there is no conservation area over it, so ordinary permitted development applies: render or re-render a wall and there is normally nothing to apply for, as long as the finish is similar in appearance to what is around it. Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out the exceptions. A straight re-render is not building control work either, but putting insulation behind the render is, and once you are renewing more than half the surface of a wall regulation 23 asks whether it should be upgraded at the same time, with Approved Document L setting the standard.
Cost
What decides the price of a plastering job
No rate per square metre. A bungalow where every ceiling is reachable off trestles, a 1990s house that is dot and dab front to back, and a seaward gable that needs a scaffold are three different jobs before a bag is mixed. A wall that only wants a skim is a fraction of one hacked off and brought back in a backing coat and a finish coat, and we find out which by tapping it over rather than guessing. Outside, render needs a tower or a scaffold priced on its own line, because the work at height rules decide the platform.
If it has come down
A ceiling that has blown or come down
Ring rather than use the form. If a ceiling is sagging or dropping bits of plaster, keep everybody out of that room and move what you can from under it. If a wall has gone soft and dark, the water has to be stopped first. Everton is twenty-five minutes from us along the coast road, so a make-safe visit here is usually same day or the next.
Worth knowing
What a bungalow changes about a ceiling job
In a house you can shut the door on the room being worked in and go upstairs. In a bungalow there is no upstairs, so dust and noise share the floor with you and the job has to be run differently.
We work one room at a time, seal the doorway and keep a route through the house clear, rather than opening up the whole place and living in it for a week. It is also why we would rather do the ceilings in the order that lets you keep a bedroom and the kitchen usable the whole way through, even if that is not the quickest order for us.
The good news is the ceilings themselves are cheaper to work on here than anywhere else. They are all at the same height and reachable from trestles, with no stairwell to build a tower in and no landing ceiling three storeys up, so what you are paying for is the work rather than the access. The catch is directly above them.
Every one of those ceilings has the loft, the cold water tank and the roof immediately over it, so a slipped tile or a weeping tank valve shows up as a stain on a room ceiling within days. If a ceiling has marked, get the hatch open and find the water first. Replastering under a live leak is money poured away.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Everton, Hordle, Tiptoe, Lymore, Milford on Sea and the rest of the SO41 villages along the coast. 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
Everton questions we get asked
Why do the render beads rust through on our seaward wall?
Because salt is landing on it. Everton is 2.6km in from the coast, so the wall stays damp between showers and the salt goes for anything metal in the system: the beads, the mesh and the fixings, working from the cut edge inwards. On a bungalow it shows low down, because there is less wall and the weather works the whole height of it. Stainless bead only, on the seaward side.
Everton is bungalow country. Does that change a ceiling job?
It changes the amount of it. With 41.7% of homes here single storey, every ceiling in the house sits under the loft rather than under a bedroom floor, so all of them see the cold roof space and all of them move with it. That is more ceiling per house than a two storey property of the same floor area. We price ceilings room by room and say which can be re-skimmed.
Are we inside the National Park boundary at Everton?
No. Everton comes under New Forest District Council rather than the National Park Authority, and the village has no conservation area of its own, so ordinary external work does not carry the extra design scrutiny you would meet a few miles north. There are 15 listed entries in the area, Efford House among them, so checking your own address is still worth doing before you change a finish.
Only the back of the house has render trouble. Why?
Because that is the face taking the weather. The exposed elevation at Everton looks south west, so it gets the driven rain first while the other three sides see the tail of it. Render on that side crazes, the cracks fill with water, and the wall behind stays wet right through the winter. We price that elevation on its own rather than assuming the whole house has to be done.
Do you remove the old ceiling or leave it bagged up?
It goes with us the same day. A hacked off ceiling comes down in wet lumps and fills more bags than people expect, but in a single storey Everton house it all comes out at ground level and straight into the van rather than down a staircase. We bag as we go instead of letting it pile up in the hall. Removal is a priced line on the quote, not an extra at the end.
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Get a price for your Everton 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.