Plastering in Furzehill
Skimming, ceilings, patching and external render across Furzehill and BH21. We knock on every wall before anybody talks about money.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Most Furzehill rooms want a skim, not a strip out. Where the plaster underneath is still firm and only the surface is tired, we board what has to be boarded, skim the lot to one flat surface, and you are decorating inside the week. A wall only goes back to the blockwork when it has genuinely let go, and we show you why before it does.
In Furzehill it is usually a patchy ceiling, a wall that has come away with the fittings, or crazed render on a gable. A ceiling has gone patchy and cracked and the decorator will not paint it until somebody has had a proper look at it. A wall has come away with the radiator, or behind the tiles that came off the kitchen, and there is bare block staring at you.
Or the render on a gable has crazed and greened and you want a straight answer on whether it can be patched or wants doing properly. Each wants somebody to touch the wall. A photograph will not tell you. We knock along every wall in the room, get a bolster behind the loose bits, and tell you which of the two jobs it is.
The work
Knock along the skirting and listen for the dull note
Knock along the skirting and listen. Behind the paint in the houses built here through the sixties and seventies is a backing coat, browning or hardwall floated onto blockwork, with a thin finish trowelled over it. Knock along the skirting and under a window.
A dull, hollow note means the backing has let go of the block, and no filler puts that back. We hack that wall off, cut it back to a clean edge, re-float with bonding where the background will not hold anything else, set fresh beads, and skim the whole room to one surface so the repair does not read as a patch when low sun comes across it.
Ceilings in most Furzehill houses are plasterboard nailed to the joists with scrim over the joints, and plenty of them had a textured coating rolled over the top later on. If you want it flat, a fresh board goes over the whole ceiling and gets skimmed. We do not sand or scrape artex: anything put up before the turn of the century can hold asbestos fibre, and overboarding leaves it where it is.
Plenty of plastering jobs are small: new windows leaving the reveals broken out, a radiator taking the plaster with it, a stud wall wanting tape and joint, a chimney breast out and a hole left behind. Angle bead on every external corner, stop bead where plaster meets a frame, and the patch feathered in, never left standing proud. New work gets dry lining, board on dabs or screwed to a stud, taped, then skimmed. Where an old garage wall is a single skin, insulated board goes on in place of plain board, and the moment you do that you are altering a thermal element, so building control want to see it and Approved Document L sets what it has to reach.
The older walls are a different animal. The brick and flint cottages and farm buildings around Furzehill are solid wall with no cavity, lime plaster on lath inside and a lime render coat outside, and they stay breathable or they hold damp. The sign somebody got that wrong already is a band of blown, salty plaster low down under gypsum. Most of the render round here is sand and cement, often dashed, and it crazes a long while before it lets go. What goes back is a primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat topcoat with a bell cast bead along the bottom, or monocouche or K Render where the colour runs through the topcoat and there is nothing to paint. For the outside walls, see rendering in Furzehill.
How it runs
Skimming, boarding and replastering in a Furzehill home
Thomas comes out, taps the walls, looks at the ceilings and prices it himself. The quote itemises protection and preparation, any plasterboard or backing coat, the beads, the finish coat, making good, and disposal. The lot comes under one company.
Most homes in Furzehill are late sixties and seventies houses and bungalows, where the ceilings are usually plasterboard and the walls often gypsum over block. A bungalow having every ceiling done is worked room by room, with furniture moved and floors and doors sheeted. Old plaster is bagged each day and leaves with us, and each room is swept before we go. If a ceiling turns out to be old lath and plaster, or a wall has damp behind it, you get a photograph and a price before the plan changes.
Inside your own walls nobody needs to be asked, and rendering is usually permitted development. Furzehill is outside any conservation area. On a listed building like Wilksworth Farmhouse, or one of the old cottages near it, a change of render or the loss of an old lime ceiling needs listed building consent from Dorset Council before a trowel is picked up.
Cost
Skim or full replaster: how the price is set
Plastering is not priced by the square metre. The same wall can be a morning or two days, depending on what is under the surface.
The room and the house. Skimming a back bedroom in a seventies detached house is contained: sheets down, door shut. Replastering all the ceilings in a bungalow turns into a whole-house job, one room at a time. A rendered gable on a two storey semi needs scaffold before any plastering starts.
Skim or strip. A sound wall that only wants a skim is quick. Where the backing coat has blown it comes off back to the block and goes back in two coats. A textured coating on a seventies ceiling may need testing for asbestos before anyone scrapes it, and overboarding with plasterboard is often the cleaner answer.
Corners and openings. Beads at every corner and reveal, making good around sockets and new windows, and setting out coving all add time.
Drying. New plaster has to dry before it is painted, which affects when you can decorate and move back in.
Ask the other plasterers quoting: skim or full replaster, are beads and making good included, and who clears the waste?
If it has come down
A ceiling that has cracked and dropped
If a ceiling is bowing or has fallen, keep everyone out of that room, and if water is involved switch off the lighting circuit. A ceiling that bulges after a leak may be holding a lot of water above it.
Scheduled plastering runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, but this needs a phone call, not the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as possible. We bring down loose plaster safely, prop or board what needs it, and find the roof, tank or pipe leak behind it, because that has to be put right before any new plaster goes up.
The one local thing
Why so many Furzehill walls sound hollow
Knock on a wall in a newer Furzehill house, or in an extension of any age, and it sounds hollow. That is not a fault. It is dry lining: plasterboard stuck to the blockwork on dabs of adhesive with an air gap behind it, then skimmed. What matters is what it means when the wall gets damaged.
On an old wet plastered wall a knock chips the finish coat and filler puts it back. On a dabbed wall the finish is a couple of millimetres of skim over paper, so the same knock goes straight through to the board, and filler over the top of it shows through the paint sooner or later.
So before you ring anybody, press the wall. Do not just tap it. A dabbed wall that sounds hollow but does not move is sound, and the damage only wants cutting back to board and skimming. A wall that gives under your palm has lost its dabs, and that one wants taking off and re-boarding, which is a different price and a different number of days. It matters for fixings too: a screw has to reach the block behind rather than stop in the board, which is why a heavy mirror pulls out of a hollow wall.
Who you are dealing with
The plasterer who prices your Furzehill job
We plaster across Furzehill, Colehill, Wimborne Minster, Holt, Stone and the rest of BH21, and the wider Dorset Council area, working out of Bournemouth. Furzehill is roughly eight miles north-west of our Boscombe base. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the company, registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Furzehill, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Thomas Hannen owns it and comes to look at the walls and ceilings and price the plastering himself. One verified customer has scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. You do not pay for the site visit, or for the written quote with each item set out.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Furzehill?
Most repairs in Furzehill 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 Furzehill |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Furzehill. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Furzehill, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Furzehill. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Furzehill. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Furzehill
Is a late 1960s wall solid plaster or plasterboard?
Most are solid plaster. The peak building period in Furzehill was the late 1960s and early 1970s at 15.5%, and 46.8% of the housing went up between 1945 and 1982, which is before dry lining took over. Expect a browning or sand and cement backing on block with a thin finish over it. That matters, because a solid wall can be cut out and re-skimmed where a failed dry lined wall usually comes off and gets reboarded.
We are in the Green Belt. Does that stop us rendering?
It does not. Green Belt policy controls where new building goes, not what finish sits on a house that is already standing, so re-rendering or repairing an elevation is untouched by it. Where it starts to matter is an extension, a garden room or a new outbuilding, and that is a Dorset Council planning question, not a plastering one. Nothing about the specification changes because of the designation.
Detached house, four walls to reach. Where do you start?
On the elevation that is failing, not all four at once. Detached houses are 35.5% of the stock in Furzehill, so many houses here have open ground on every side and scaffold can stand on your own land without a licence or a neighbour's agreement. That makes it straightforward to price one face, do it, and leave the others until they need doing instead of committing to the whole envelope.
Where does the old plaster and rubble end up?
In a skip or grab bags on the drive, which is one advantage of houses with their own frontage. Stripping a room produces far more weight than people expect, and it is dirty rather than dusty once it is bagged. Old boards and backing coat come out through the nearest door over sheeting, floors stay covered, and the room is swept and vacuumed before new work starts. Removal is written into the quote.
Wilksworth Farmhouse is listed. Could our house be too?
Almost certainly not: there are only 14 listed entries in the whole of Furzehill, Wilksworth Farmhouse among them, and they are old buildings rather than post-war housing. Furzehill has no conservation area of its own either, so for most houses here nothing external needs consent from Dorset Council. You can check any address on the national list in a couple of minutes, and if it does come back listed we work to lime and matched materials.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Furzehill
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Furzehill, and the other trades we offer in Furzehill itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Furzehill
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 Corfe Mullen Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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Get a price for the room, not a guess
Tell us the room and what has gone wrong with it. We come out, go round every wall, and put a written itemised price in front of you.