Plastering and rendering in Holton Heath
Ceilings, damaged dry lining, conversions and external render across Holton Heath and BH16. We look at the room before anybody talks about money.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most of what goes wrong in a Holton Heath house is on the surface, not behind it. Joints showing through a ceiling, a corner knocked off, a wall damaged when the units came out: none of that needs a wall taking back to the block. It needs the damage cut out properly and the whole room skimmed to one surface so the repair stops showing.
People here ring us about three things. A ceiling where you can see every board joint and every fixing through the emulsion, usually worse in low winter sun. A room being brought up to date, where the kitchen or the bathroom has come out and taken lumps of the wall with it.
And a gable outside where the dashed render has cracked and started coming away in patches. All of them are ordinary work and all of them are quicker and cheaper if somebody looks first. We come out, go round the room by hand, and the price goes to you in writing.
The work
Every board joint drawing a line through the paint
Every board joint drawing a line through the paint. The houses built here through the eighties, and the eighties are the biggest single slice of this place, have taped and jointed ceilings rather than a full skim: the board joints scrimmed and filled, sanded, and painted straight over. It looks perfect for years, then the boards move a fraction with the seasons and every joint and every screw draws a line through the paint. Filling them again gets you another two winters. Skimming the whole ceiling in one pass puts a continuous finish coat over the lot and ends it, and it wants a few days before a mist coat and decorating.
Dry lining is the standard here, board on dabs with a gap behind and then skimmed, so a wall that sounds hollow is normal. What is not normal is a corner knocked through to the paper, or a patch filled four times that still shows: cut back to a clean square, new board let in, a fresh angle bead on the corner, and the wall skimmed out so there is no patch to catch the light. Bungalows are better than a quarter of the houses here and most have textured ceilings, which get over-boarded and skimmed rather than sanded, because anything applied before the turn of the century can hold asbestos fibre.
Conservatories becoming proper rooms. A common job around here. Once a conservatory becomes a heated room the walls and roof have to perform, so the lining is insulated board rather than plain plasterboard on a stud, taped and skimmed, which makes it a thermal element building control will want to see and that Approved Document L sets the target for. Worth pricing in from the start rather than finding it halfway through. Where an older wall was floated rather than dry lined, a blown float coat comes off and goes back in bonding, browning or hardwall before the finish. The dashed gables here are sand and cement and let go in sheets, and what goes back is a primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat topcoat on a bell cast bead, or monocouche or K Render.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from the first visit to the last, one person to ring, and the quote itemised: protection and preparation, board or backing coat, beads, finish coat, making good and disposal on separate lines. The site visit is a survey of what is behind the surface, tapping walls and ceilings over before anything is priced. Furniture is moved and sheeted before anything comes off a wall, and the old plaster leaves with us. Plastering inside needs no planning permission and rendering an existing house is normally permitted development. Holton Heath has no conservation area of its own. There are five listed entries in the parish, and on one of those the rules change completely: even taking old lime plaster off an internal wall wants listed building consent first. Ask before the first bag is opened, not after.
Cost
What decides the price
No rate per square metre. A bedroom in one of the eighties detached houses is a barrow, a dust sheet and a door kept shut; a bungalow having all its ceilings done is a whole house worked room by room; a dashed gable on a two storey semi is a scaffold or a tower before it is anything else. A sound wall that wants a skim is a different job from one where the backing coat has blown and has to come off back to the block. Ask whether it is a skim or a full replaster, and who takes the waste away.
If it has come down
A ceiling down, or plaster blown off the wall
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that has cracked and dropped, or a wet patch spreading across a wall, goes to the front of the queue. Holton Heath is a straight run down the Wareham road for us, so a first look is normally the same day if you catch us in the morning. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
The one local thing
If your job adds a bedroom, sort the permission before the plaster
Holton Heath drains into Poole Harbour, and the harbour is a protected site with a nutrient problem. The practical effect is that any scheme adding overnight accommodation in this catchment has to show how the extra nitrogen is being dealt with before the council can grant permission. That is not a plastering rule, but it lands on plastering jobs constantly, because the work that adds a bedroom is exactly the work that ends with somebody boarding and skimming: a loft conversion, a garage turned into a bedroom, an annexe over the garden.
So the order matters. Get the permission settled first, then book the trades. We have been called out to price the finishing on conversions that had no consent yet and were not going to get it that year, with the boards already bought and sitting in the garage.
If your project is not adding a bedroom, a bigger sitting room, a utility, a home office, a proper room in place of a conservatory, none of this touches you and you can crack on. If it is, ring the council before you ring anybody else, and get the answer in writing. We will hold a slot rather than have you spending money in the wrong order.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Holton Heath, Sandford, Organford, Lytchett Minster, Wareham and the rest of BH16, in the Dorset Council area, out of Bournemouth. 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
Holton Heath questions we get asked
Why do the ceiling joints show on 1980s houses here?
Those are the board joints opening, which is the usual pattern on housing of that age. The 1980s is the peak building period in Holton Heath at 26.3%, and ceilings from then were often taped and jointed rather than skimmed all over, so there is a band of filler over scrim tape at each joint instead of a continuous plaster surface. The tape moves with the boards and the line shows through. A full skim ends it.
Should a hollow-sounding wall in a newer house worry us?
On its own it should not. Around 36.4% of the housing here was built between 1983 and 2008, and by then walls were being dry lined, with plasterboard fixed on dabs of adhesive so there is a void behind most of the surface. That is the construction, not a failure. Press the wall with your palm across the room. Solid resistance and tight joints mean it is fine. Give, and open joints, mean the dabs have let go.
Does Poole Harbour affect adding a room over the garage?
Only where the scheme creates somewhere new to sleep. Holton Heath drains into the Poole Harbour catchment, and the nutrient rules attach to anything adding overnight accommodation, so a new bedroom over the garage engages them where a re-skim of the existing house does not. It is settled with Dorset Council at planning stage, well before anyone boards a wall. Plastering is not what triggers it.
Bungalow, everything on one level. Does that make it simpler?
For getting the work in, yes. Bungalows are 28.0% of dwellings in Holton Heath, so boards and bags come straight through a door rather than up a staircase and round a landing, which saves an hour or two at each end of the job. The trade-off is that traffic and dust run along one corridor past every room, so sheeting and a closed door on the rooms we are not touching matter more here.
Can you skim a wall where the tiles have come off?
Yes, once the background is sound. Tiles usually pull the face of the old plaster with them, leaving a patchwork of bare block and torn gypsum that will not hold a thin coat directly. It gets cut back to something solid, dubbed out where the loss is deep, and bonded before the finish goes on. Skimming straight onto tile adhesive residue is what gives you a wall that crazes within weeks.
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Plastering and rendering near Holton Heath
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Get the room priced, not guessed at
Tell us what the wall or the ceiling is doing. We come out, go round it by hand, and put a written itemised price in front of you.