Plastering in Ferndown
Ceilings, re-skims, dry lining and render across Ferndown, West Parley and BH22. Ten minutes from us, and priced in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Ferndown is a twentieth century town, so most of its walls are gypsum plaster on blockwork or plasterboard, not lime on lath. That is good news: the repairs are quicker, the materials are ordinary, and most rooms are a two day job, not a fortnight.
In Ferndown it is usually a soaked ceiling or a room being modernised. A ceiling or a wall has been marked or soaked, usually by a leak from above, and it needs taking back and putting right. A room is being modernised, the artex and the coving are coming off and it needs to be flat and ready to paint.
Or a wall has been opened up, a chimney breast has gone or a garage has become a room, and the new work needs to finish so you cannot tell where the old stops. We are ten minutes up the road, so we come out, tap it over and tell you which of those you are dealing with before we price it.
The work
Everything the late sixties left on the ceiling
Re-skimming walls and ceilings. Most walls in Ferndown are blockwork with a browning or hardwall backing coat behind the finish, and once the paper is off they come up patchy, not flat. We prepare the surface, PVA the porous patches and lay two coats of finish plaster on with a trowel. A ceiling is a day, a room is usually two, and new plaster wants a few days before a mist coat and decorating.
Artex, coving and textured walls. Houses built here in the late sixties and seventies, which is a fifth of Ferndown on its own, almost all got a textured ceiling and a run of coving, and plenty of it is still up. Flat and well stuck, it is skimmed over. Deep swirls get overboarded and the new board skimmed. It is never sanded, since a coating of that age can contain asbestos. Coving comes off first and the line it leaves is made good in the same pass.
Close to a third of the town lives in low rise blocks, and the plastering that goes with them is its own job: a top floor ceiling put back after a roof leak, a bathroom ceiling in the flat below somebody else's shower tray, communal hallways and stair soffits patched and re-skimmed, and everything carried up and down a shared stair. We work to the hours the block allows, sheet the landing as well as the flat, and take the waste out the same day, never stacking bags by somebody's front door.
Anything built from the eighties on is likely to be plasterboard on dabs with taped joints, so a hollow sounding wall there is normal, not a fault. We repair it the way it was built and put in stud partitions when a big room is split or a bungalow gains an en suite. Chimney breast removals, garage conversions and rear extensions are where the finish shows: new boards against old plaster move differently, so the joint is scrimmed and beaded, not filled and hoped over, with an angle bead on every external corner and a stop bead where new plaster stops against a frame.
Rendered gables and porches, mostly sand and cement with the odd pebbledash panel, crack and go hollow with age. A cracked panel over a sound background is cut out and matched in with new render coats; a whole elevation that has parted from the blockwork comes off and goes back on a mesh-reinforced basecoat with a silicone thin coat, or a monocouche where the colour runs through the material, with a bell cast bead at the base. For the outside walls, see rendering in Ferndown.
How it runs
Plastering a room in a flat or bungalow, day by day
Thomas visits and knocks along the walls and ceilings with his knuckles, since blown plaster sounds dull and that tells him whether a skim is enough or it has to be stripped. On the written quote, dust protection, stripping out, plasterboard or a backing coat where needed, the finish coat, angle beads and making good are listed separately. One company sees the job from start to finish.
A bungalow keeps everything on one floor, so ceilings are done off trestles and nothing is carried upstairs. In a first or second floor flat, each bag comes up the communal stair, so we protect the landing and let the neighbours know which days we are in. Floors are covered, sockets taped and dust kept inside the room. Waste plaster is bagged and removed, and the room is cleaned down every day. Damp found behind the old plaster is shown to you with a price, and the choice is yours.
Ferndown's streets sit outside any conservation area and listed buildings are few, Holy Cross Abbey at Stapehill among them, so on an unlisted house rendering or re-rendering is permitted development as long as the new finish looks much like the houses around it, and the Planning Portal page on external walls lists the exceptions. The parish's conservation area covers only the hamlet of Hampreston. Dorset Council is the authority. Plastering inside needs nothing, but taking out a chimney breast is building control work, because something has to carry what is above it.
Cost
Skim or full re-plaster: pricing plasterwork here
Plastering is not priced per square metre. One wall may want a skim, the next a full re-plaster, and tapping is how you find out.
Carrying materials. A top floor flat where each bag goes up a shared staircase is slower work than a bungalow with the rooms emptied, and the time shows.
The wall now. A sound wall needing only a skim costs a fraction of one hacked back and rebuilt in a backing coat and a finish coat. Most of the town's post-war houses are wet plastered on block. Newer houses are often dot and dab plasterboard, which is repaired differently.
Ceilings. Artex and textured ceilings are common in houses of this age. Older Artex can contain asbestos, so it is tested before anyone scrapes or sands it. Sound Artex can often be skimmed, and loose or cracked Artex is boarded over first.
Outside. Render needs a tower or scaffold as its own priced line, since the work at height rules set what platform is safe.
Flats. Inside is normally yours to organise, but check the lease on ceilings and party walls.
Ask other plasterers to say plainly: skim or full re-plaster, beads and making good included or not, and who clears the rubbish.
If it has come down
A ceiling sagging or down in one of your rooms
Phone rather than use the form. A ceiling that bows or sheds lumps of plaster means everyone out of that room, with whatever you can move taken from underneath. Water coming through means switching that room's lighting off at the consumer unit.
In a flat the source may be upstairs, so knock on their door and tell the managing agent. The first visit brings the loose material down onto dust sheets instead of your carpet, secures the rest and finds the cause. Plastering is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If nobody answers, your call is returned as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
In a flat, check who is allowed to instruct the work
A lot of Ferndown is flats and maisonettes, and on a flat the structure and the outside walls usually belong to the freeholder and are looked after out of the service charge.
So if you are a leaseholder with a stain spreading across a top floor ceiling, or render coming away on the block, the quickest route is often finding out who manages the building rather than booking a plasterer. Ring us anyway. We will look, say what has actually happened, and put it in writing so you have something to send the managing agent instead of an argument.
Inside your own flat it is usually your call, but read the lease before you take a wall out or change a ceiling, because internal alterations often need the freeholder's consent in writing.
And if you sit on the residents' company, one rule is worth knowing early: where work would cost any single leaseholder more than £250, the leaseholders have to be formally consulted first under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. That moves the timetable rather than the job, and external work is far easier arranged in spring than in November.
Who you are dealing with
Your plasterer in BH22, and how to check the company
We plaster and render across BH22: Ferndown itself, Stapehill, Longham, West Parley, West Moors and the streets between. Our Boscombe base is 5.9 miles away, and the council is Dorset. The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which anyone can look up. Before you book a visit in Ferndown, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Thomas Hannen, who owns it, taps the walls and gives you the price himself. One verified customer has given us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You pay nothing for the visit or the written, itemised quote.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ferndown?
Most repairs in Ferndown 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 Ferndown |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Ferndown. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Ferndown, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, Ferndown has listed buildings. If yours is one, or stands in the grounds of one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ferndown. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Ferndown
Ferndown has no conservation area. Does that make things simpler?
For the outside, it does. Ferndown town has no conservation area and only a few listed buildings, Holy Cross Abbey at Stapehill among them, so on an unlisted house the render finish and its colour are down to you and Dorset Council does not need to approve the look of it.
The parish does have one conservation area, but it covers the separate hamlet of Hampreston rather than the town. That is genuinely unusual around this patch. The Green Belt on the edge of the town matters for an extension or an outbuilding and not at all for recovering a wall you already have.
Ferndown is bungalows and flats. Which are you set up for?
Both, and they are different jobs. Bungalows are 42.7% of the housing here and flats another 30.9%, which between them is close to three quarters of Ferndown. In a bungalow everything is reachable off a low platform and the spoil goes straight out of the door. In a flat the internal walls are yours, the ceilings may be shared structure, and the outside is not yours at all.
Can we replaster inside our flat without asking the freeholder?
Usually the inside is yours to do, but read the lease before booking anything, because some of them treat ceilings and anything fixed to a party wall as the landlord's. With 30.9% of Ferndown homes being flats, it is worth checking before anything is booked. The moment work touches the outside walls, the roof or a communal area it stops being your decision and the agent has to instruct it.
Ferndown is close to your base. Does that help?
It does. It is under six miles from us, so looking at a job in Ferndown is a short run, and Thomas Hannen comes out himself. He measures, checks what is behind the existing finish and leaves you with a written itemised quote. Being this close also means coming back for a snag is easy.
Can a bungalow be done in stages while we live there?
That is how most of them go. In a single storey house every room is on one level, so we can shut off half the bungalow behind a taped sheet and leave you a kitchen and a bedroom, then swap the two over. Ceilings are the disruptive part, because everything has to come out of the room first. We agree the order at the visit and work to it.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Ferndown
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Ferndown, and the other trades we offer in Ferndown itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Ferndown
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 Ferndown Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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