Plastering in Highcliffe
Ceilings, room re-skims, condensation damp and coastal render across Highcliffe and BH23. We find out why the plaster failed before we quote to replace it.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Before you pay anybody to replaster a wall in Highcliffe, find out why the plaster failed. A wall that is wet from outside, or cold enough to run with condensation, will wreck a new finish inside a winter. We work that out on the free site visit and tell you what has to be sorted first, even when the answer is that the job is not ours.
In a Highcliffe house the plastering list is a cracked, patchy ceiling, black mould in a cold bedroom corner and seaward render letting go. A ceiling that has gone cracked and patchy and is holding up the decorator. Black mould that keeps coming back in the same cold corner of a bedroom, no matter how often it is wiped off. And render on the seaward side of the house that has crazed, cracked and started letting go in sheets.
The first is a straight plastering job. The other two are only half plastering, and the half that comes first is finding out where the water is coming from. We go round with a knuckle, a palm and a moisture meter before anybody talks about money.
The work
The coldest corner in the room is where mould starts
Bungalow ceilings, and the artex on them. Highcliffe is full of low, wide bungalow ceilings from the fifties and sixties, close on three in ten dwellings here being bungalows, and most of those ceilings are plasterboard with a textured coating rolled over the top.
Artex does not get sanded or scraped, because anything applied before the turn of the century can hold asbestos fibre. A fresh board goes over the whole ceiling and gets skimmed, coving back on if you want it, and a normal room is a day.
Getting on for four in ten dwellings in Highcliffe are flats or maisonettes, and inside them the work is hallways and living rooms brought back to one flat surface, ceilings boarded and skimmed, and making good after a kitchen or a bathroom comes out. A flat needs more planning than a house: boards cut outside, the communal stair sheeted and kept clear, waste carried out and never left on a landing, and noisy work kept to sensible hours so your neighbours stay your neighbours. The outside of a flat belongs to the freeholder and is managed out of the service charge, so on render, or on a ceiling under someone else's roof, we will tell you whose repair it is before you spend anything on it.
The coldest corner is where mould starts. A lot of the fifties and sixties stock in Highcliffe has an unfilled cavity or a solid wall, and the corner where two outside walls meet is the coldest point in the room. Warm damp air condenses there and mould follows. Replastering on its own just gives it a clean surface to grow on. The fix is insulated board dry lined onto the wall, which makes it a thermal element that building control want to see and that Approved Document L sets a target for, plus enough ventilation to carry the moisture out, which is what Approved Document F is about.
The seaward elevations are two hundred metres from the water and take salt and driven rain together, and they show it first at the edges: a bell cast that has crumbled, a cracked sand and cement render lifting off the blockwork, rust bleeding through the paint where an old bead or a lintel is corroding behind. What goes back is stainless or plastic beads, a primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat topcoat that stays flexible and sheds water. Monocouche, K Render and pebbledash all have their place; the choice is about how much movement the wall does, not about the brochure. For the outside walls, see rendering in Highcliffe.
New windows leave the reveals broken out, a radiator comes off and takes the finish with it, a stud wall goes up and wants tape and joint: angle bead on every external corner, stop bead where new plaster meets a frame, and the patch worked into what is there instead of standing proud of it. Up by the castle there are solid brick walls with lime plaster on lath, and those have to stay breathable, so they get a lime plaster and a lime render coat back rather than a modern backing coat.
How it runs
Skimming, boarding and replastering in Highcliffe homes
Thomas comes and looks at the walls and ceilings, taps for hollow patches, and checks for damp before anything is priced. The quote lists protection and preparation, the board or backing coat, beads, the finish coat, making good, and disposal. You deal with one company for the plastering, start to finish.
In a bungalow the whole house is on one floor, so ceilings can be done room by room while you live around it. In a flat, the materials and the waste go up and down a shared stair, the communal hall is sheeted, and it is worth telling the managing agent when we are coming. Floors and furniture are covered, and dust is kept behind a closed door.
Many ceilings from the sixties and seventies carry textured coating. Some of it contains asbestos, so a sample is tested before anyone scrapes or sands it. Usually the right answer is to overboard it with plasterboard and skim, and you get the test result and the options in writing. Anything else found once the old plaster is off gets a photograph and a price first. Internal walls and ceilings are all priced room by room.
Plastering inside needs no planning permission. Rendering a house is usually permitted development. Outside work in the Bramble Lane conservation area, or the one at Verno Lane, is worth checking on the council's list. On a listed building, even taking off old lime plaster inside needs consent.
Cost
Textured ceilings, blown plaster and stairs: what drives the cost
Plastering is not something we price per square metre. One room can be a day's skim and the next a week's work, depending on what is under the paint.
Skim or strip. If the wall is sound, a skim coat finishes it. If the backing coat has blown, you hear it when you tap: dull and hollow. That plaster is hacked back to the masonry and rebuilt with bonding or browning before the finish goes on, which is a far bigger job.
The ceiling. An old textured ceiling is usually overboarded with plasterboard and skimmed; one that sags may be better pulled down. Either way the boards are screwed into sound joists and the joints taped or beaded.
Damp on the seaward side. Blown plaster on an outside wall facing the sea is often the result of rain getting through. Plastering over it without fixing the cause means doing it twice, so the cause is looked at first.
Getting materials in. A ground floor flat or a bungalow is easy. A top floor flat up three flights of a communal stair with no lift means every bag carried up and every sack of waste carried down.
Outside. A rendered gable is a scaffold job before it is a plastering one.
Drying time. A full replaster needs to dry before decorating, which matters if you are working to a date.
From any other plasterer, find out: skim or full replaster, what happens to the ceiling, and who removes the waste.
If it has come down
A ceiling that has sagged, cracked or come down
If a ceiling is bulging, or plaster has dropped off in sheets, keep everyone out of the room and turn off the lights on that circuit. Water in a ceiling and electrics do not mix.
In a flat, the water often comes from the flat above, so knock or tell the managing agent, because it may be their repair before it is yours. The first visit takes down anything loose, props what needs it, and finds out whether the water has stopped. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When a ceiling has come down, phone us rather than filling in the form, and if nobody answers, we call back as soon as possible.
The one local thing
In a Highcliffe flat, you may not be the one who can order the work
About a third of the homes in Highcliffe are flats or maisonettes, and that changes who you ring. Inside your own front door, the plaster is yours: skim the living room, board and skim the ceiling, make good after a new kitchen, all of it is your decision and your bill.
The outside walls, the render, the roof over the top flat and the communal hall and stairs almost always belong to the freeholder and are paid for out of the service charge. So when the damp patch on your living room wall is water tracking through cracked render outside, you cannot simply book somebody to replaster it. The managing agent has to instruct the outside work, and replastering before that happens is money spent twice.
The practical steps are short. Get the lease out and find the repairing clause, then put the problem to the agent in writing with photographs and a date. If the freeholder is going to spend more than section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 allows without asking, currently £250 for any one leaseholder, they have to consult the leaseholders first, which means you get notice, you see the estimates and you can comment.
We are happy to price external repairs for a managing agent or a residents' company, and equally happy to quote your inside work separately so you are not held up by the block. What we will not do is put a new finish on a wall that is still getting wet from the other side.
Who you are dealing with
The plastering firm, in plain facts
Flats, bungalows and houses across BH23, from Friars Cliff up to Walkford and west into Christchurch, are in our plastering area, and BCP Council covers all of it. From our base in Boscombe it is 5.7 miles.
The walls get looked at and priced by Thomas Hannen, whose business it is, not by a salesman. There is a verified 10 out of 10 from a customer on Checkatrade. The visit to look at the job is free, and you get the price written down and itemised at no cost. The firm is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Highcliffe, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Highcliffe?
Most repairs in Highcliffe 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 Highcliffe |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Highcliffe. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Bramble Lane Conservation Area and Verno Lane Conservation Area. They cover parts of Highcliffe, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Highcliffe. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Highcliffe. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Highcliffe
Who authorises render work on a Highcliffe block of flats?
The freeholder or the managing agent, not usually the person who rings up. Flats and maisonettes are 38.2% of dwellings in Highcliffe, and on a leasehold flat the outside walls belong to the building, not the individual home, with work paid for out of the service charge. Above a certain spend the leaseholders have to be consulted first. We will price it, but the instruction has to come from whoever holds the freehold.
Two hundred metres from the sea. Does that change render?
Only on the seaward face: Highcliffe sits 0.2km from the coast with its exposed elevation looking south west, so that wall gets salt and driven rain together and stays wet longer between showers. A mesh reinforced silicone system copes with that repeated wetting. Rigid sand and cement goes hard, splits at the corners of openings, and then holds water behind itself, which is the worst of both worlds.
White powder keeps coming through the paint. Is it the plaster?
It is salt in the wall pushing out to the surface as it dries, and this close to the water there is more of it about than inland. Wiping it off achieves nothing while the background is still drying, and painting over it lifts the paint again. The answer is to let the wall dry, brush the salts off dry rather than wet, and use a backing that tolerates them before any finish goes on.
The bungalow dates from about 1960. What is behind the walls?
A sand and cement backing on blockwork with a thin gypsum finish over it, in most cases. The late 1950s and early 1960s is the peak building period in Highcliffe at 22.5%, and 64.1% of the housing went up between 1945 and 1982, so that build-up is the local default. Bungalows are 28.7% of the stock. Those walls patch and re-skim well, provided the backing is still stuck to the block.
Highcliffe Castle is listed. Does that affect nearby houses?
Not directly: listing attaches to the building itself, so the 18 listed entries in Highcliffe, the Castle and Greystones among them, carry controls on their own fabric rather than on the street around them. Highcliffe does have two conservation areas, Bramble Lane and Verno Lane, where changes to how a house looks from outside can need checking, but plastering inside is not one of them. Outside those areas most houses here have no external appearance controls at all, and Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council is only interested if the shape of the building changes.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Highcliffe
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Highcliffe, and the other trades we offer in Highcliffe itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Highcliffe
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 Highcliffe Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get it looked at properly, then priced
Tell us what the wall or the ceiling is doing. We come out, work out the cause, and put a written itemised price in front of you.