Plastering and rendering in Hyde

Three coats of lime, each in its own time. The older buildings here are one thickness of brick or cob with no cavity, and they were plastered in lime for a reason. We work in three coats the way the wall expects: a scratch coat pushed well in, a float coat brought true, and a fine finish trowelled up. It takes longer than gypsum because each coat has to set in its own time, and it is the difference between a wall that dries out and one that pushes salts through your paint every spring.

Old ceilings are lime pressed through timber lath, held up by the nibs squeezed out over the top. When those break the ceiling bows and drops dust. Firm to the palm and only hairline cracked, it can be over-boarded and skimmed. Moving under your hand, it comes down, the joists are checked while they are open, and it goes back in board and skim, or in haired lime where the building is worth it.

After water has been in. A burst pipe in an empty cottage, a gutter that has run down a wall all winter, a shower that has leaked behind the tiles. The flood zones do not reach the village but the surface water risk here is high and Huckles Brook runs a little over half a kilometre off, so we see plenty of it. The plaster is the last part of that job, not the first: skirtings off, the loose material back to something sound, and the wall left open to dry properly before anything covers it up. On a dry lined wall the board itself wicks water up and has to be cut out, because there is no drying a soaked plasterboard. A band of blown plaster a foot off the floor usually means ground levels outside have crept above the inside floor, or that cement render is holding water in, so we look outside first and put breathable lime back rather than sealing the wall up again.

The rest is ordinary work and plenty of it. Artex over-boarded and skimmed rather than scraped, because a coating put up before the turn of the century can hold asbestos fibre. Dabbed walls that sound hollow, damaged corners cut back to board and let in square, plasterboard on a stud, tape and joint, angle bead on the corners and stop bead at the reveals. Outside, an old building gets a lime render and limewash; on a modern house it is cracked sand and cement replaced with a primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat topcoat on a bell cast bead.

No rate per square metre. A forest cottage with narrow doors and low beams is slow before a bag is opened; a modern house along the lane is a barrow and a dust sheet; an outbuilding with a high open roof wants a tower inside as well as anything outside. A 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 masonry, and lime work adds the waiting between coats to both. Ask whether it is a skim or a full replaster, and who takes the waste.

We cover Hyde, Frogham, Godshill, Fordingbridge, Sandleheath and the rest of SP6, in the New Forest National Park, 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.