Plastering in Hangersley

Three generations of filler under one wall of paper. The big detached houses along the lanes in Hangersley change hands and get stripped back, and what turns up under the paper is usually sound but ugly: old textured coating, patched-in cable chases, three generations of filler.

If the backing is firm, that is a skim. We prepare the surface so the finish will take, tape any board joints, run new beads on the corners and reveals, and bring walls and ceiling to one flat surface in a day or two a room.

Ceilings divide by age. In the post-war houses, which are better than half of what stands here, a ceiling is plasterboard and the fault is at the joints or the nails. In the older cottages it is lime plaster pushed through timber lath, and when it sags it is because the keys above have snapped off. Those do not get patched. The ceiling comes down, the joists get checked while they are open, and it goes back in board and skim, or in lime where the building calls for it.

Plaster round a woodburner. Half the houses out this way have put a stove back into a fireplace, and the plaster round a new flue is the bit that gets rushed, then cracks along the chimney breast every winter as the whole thing warms and cools. Done properly it wants the right board against the heat, a movement joint where the breast meets the ceiling, and beads that let the corner move a little instead of splitting. On a cottage with no cavity, a band of blown, crumbling plaster a foot off the floor is a wall trying to breathe through a finish that will not let it. We take that back, let the wall dry, and put lime plaster and a lime render coat back so the moisture leaves through the surface instead of pushing salts through your paint.

Hangersley sits high with open ground to the west, and the weather arrives on that elevation first. Inter-war pebbledash and post-war sand and cement craze and crack there years before the sheltered side shows anything. What we put back is a primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat topcoat with a bell cast bead at the bottom, or a monocouche or K Render where the look suits it better. For the outside walls, see rendering in Hangersley.

Stables, a workshop, an old brick store turned into an office: new work goes up as dry lining, board on dabs or screwed to a stud, taped and skimmed. On a single skin wall it is insulated board rather than plain board, which makes it a thermal element, so building control want to see it and Approved Document L sets what it has to reach.

Plastering is not priced by the square metre here: one wall might need a morning's skim, another a full strip.

The house. Skimming one bedroom in a post-war detached house is a tidy, contained job. Doing every ceiling in a bungalow means working through the whole house, moving furniture as we go. A rendered gable on an old cottage behind a bank and a hedge is an access problem before it is a plastering one.

What is under it. Blown backing coat has to come off to the brick or block. Old lath and plaster ceilings may be overboarded or taken down, which is a messier day.

The material. Lime is slower to apply and to dry than gypsum, so it takes more of our time, but it is right for older solid walls.

Damp walls. On an older cottage, a wall that is damp at the base needs the cause found before any plaster goes on, or the new finish fails too.

Finishing. Beads at corners, making good at sockets and reveals, and drying time before decoration all count.

On any other plasterer's quote, look for whether it is a skim or a full replaster, whether beads and making good are in, and whether waste removal is included.

We plaster across Hangersley, Ringwood, Poulner, Burley, Ashley Heath and the rest of BH24, and the Forest villages nearby, working out of Bournemouth. Our Boscombe base is roughly nine and a half miles away, with the New Forest National Park Authority as planning authority.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company 15471719 in England and Wales, is the firm you deal with, and Thomas Hannen, who owns it, comes out to look at your walls and ceilings and prices them himself. Our Checkatrade page shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10. Coming to look and writing the itemised quote cost you nothing. Before you book a visit in Hangersley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Hangersley 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.