Plastering in Longham
Ceilings, skimming, dry lining and render across Longham and BH22. We look at it properly, then put an itemised price in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Most Longham ceilings we are asked to look at do not need pulling down. If the plasterboard above the Artex is still firm, it can be skimmed flat over the top, and that is a day in the room rather than a week of mess.
Three jobs make up most of our week here. A textured ceiling somebody has finally had enough of. Cracks that have opened along the board joints, usually in a bungalow where the ceiling runs from one end of the house to the other. And a garage being turned into a room, which arrives as bare blockwork and a new stud wall wanting boarding and skimming.
We come out, push a hand up at the ceiling and sound the walls, and tell you which of them you have. Most houses along here went up between the late sixties and the early eighties, so we are rarely guessing about what is behind the surface.
The work
Skim the whole room or you will see the join
Skim the whole room or you will see the join. Plasterboard nailed to the joists, a scrim tape joint cracked in a line across the room, and a textured coating over the lot. Where the board is firm the ceiling is cleaned, stabilised and skimmed in two passes, and the finish coat takes the texture out completely. Where the board is sagging between the nails, or somebody has cut a run of downlighters through it, it comes down and goes back up on screws. The walls in these houses are solid gypsum on a block inner leaf, and after fifty years of paper and paint they are tired rather than failed, so it is every wall in the room, not just the one you rang about.
Better than a third of the dwellings here are bungalows and six in ten went up between the war and the early eighties, which changes how the work runs: a whole bungalow skimmed while it is empty goes faster than the same floor area in a two storey house, because there is no stairwell to work round and everything comes off one tower.
Garage conversions. A lot of the bungalows here have an integral garage that is worth more as a room. Blockwork gets dry lining on dot and dab, or insulated board where the wall is going to be heated, new partitions in stud, then tape and joint or a full skim, with angle bead on every corner and stop bead where the plaster meets a reveal. That work needs building control, so it is worth having the boarding specified before anybody starts.
Around the old part of Longham by the river there are a dozen or so listed buildings and a few cottages besides, and they are a different animal: solid walls with no cavity, lime plaster on lath, and nothing to stop water except the ability to dry out again. Those get a breathable lime backing coat, put on as a scratch coat and a render coat where the wall is bare, rather than the gypsum that suits everything else here.
Outside it is painted sand and cement render and pebbledash on the gables and chimneys of that generation, which goes hollow at the top of the wall where the weather hits it. Where more than about a third has gone it comes off and goes back as a mesh reinforced basecoat with a silicone thin coat topcoat, or a through-coloured monocouche, on a bell cast bead clear of the damp course and priced with the scaffold on its own line.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
It starts with a free site visit and a survey of every wall and ceiling in the rooms concerned, and the quote is itemised line by line. Doorways are closed, because plaster dust travels further than people expect, and the waste leaves with us. Nothing you do inside needs planning permission, and there is no conservation area over Longham, so the outside is more open here than in the older villages: cladding or rendering a wall is normally permitted development, and Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out where that stops. Building control is the one that does apply, because turning a garage into a room, or re-rendering most of an elevation, is work Approved Document L has something to say about. Dorset Council covers both.
Cost
What decides the price
There is no useful rate per square metre. A block wall with sound gypsum on it, a ceiling that has already been overboarded once, and a garage wall that has never been lined are three different prices for what looks like the same amount of surface. A bungalow with double gates and a drive, a semi with a shared path, and a detached house with a conservatory across the gable are three more. Ask whether it is a skim or a full replaster, and who takes the waste.
If it has just gone
A ceiling down, or a wall that has let go
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that has dropped, plaster off a wall after a leak, or render that has come away from a gable goes to the front of the queue. Longham is under five miles up the road from us, one of the shortest runs we make, so this is normally the same day. The phone is answered 24 hours for emergencies; scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
In bungalow country the ceiling is the job
More than a third of the houses here are bungalows, and that changes the shape of the work more than people expect. A bungalow carries all of its ceiling on one floor, with the loft directly over every room in the house, so ceilings are the bulk of what we are asked to do and the areas are large and unbroken.
It also means whatever is going on above is only one layer away. A slow leak, a water tank, a bathroom fan venting into the loft instead of out through the roof, all of it lands on the ceiling below and shows up as a stained, sagging patch rather than as anything you would notice upstairs.
Two practical things follow. If a ceiling is coming down, clear the loft above it first, because everything stored up there sits on the same joists and will end up in the room. And an open ceiling is the cheapest look you will get at the insulation over it, since the access is already paid for. Skim over the top and that stays shut, which is a fair reason to take a borderline ceiling down instead. We will tell you which side of borderline yours is.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Longham, Ferndown, West Parley, Hampreston, Stapehill and Bearwood across BH22 and the roads either side of the Stour. 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
Longham questions we get asked
Bungalow country here. Does that change a ceiling job?
It changes what is above the ceiling. Bungalows are 36.3% of dwellings in Longham, so every ceiling in the house backs straight onto a cold loft rather than onto a heated room above. Loft insulation sits on the joists we fix to and has to be pulled back and put right afterwards, and a cold ceiling shows condensation staining along the joist lines in a way a first floor one never does.
Six in ten houses went up before 1983. Why the cracks?
Because the whole neighbourhood aged at once. Sixty per cent of Longham's housing was built between 1945 and 1982 and 28.1% of it in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so the same construction is reaching the same point at the same time. What you see is a hairline over door heads and along ceiling perimeters as the structure has settled and dried out. It is cosmetic until the plaster sounds hollow round it.
You are only a few miles away. How soon can someone look?
Longham is 4.7 miles from the base, so getting out to look is usually a matter of days rather than weeks, and a small job can be slotted in between bigger ones. Thomas comes out and prices it himself rather than sending a salesman round, and the site visit and the written itemised quote both cost nothing. Materials are not ordered until you have agreed the breakdown line by line.
What does a written quote for a ceiling actually list?
Each stage separately, so you can see what you are paying for and drop a line if you want to. That means protection and clearing the room, strip out or overboard, the boards themselves, scrim and jointing, the skim, removal of the waste, and making good where the ceiling meets the wall. VAT is shown on it. If a light fitting or a loft hatch changes the work, it appears as its own line.
Should a textured ceiling be overboarded or brought down?
Overboarding wins more often than not where the ceiling is otherwise sound. Screwing new board through the old one into the joists gives a flat surface to skim without the dust, the disruption and the disposal that stripping brings, and it keeps the room usable sooner. Bringing it down is the right call when the existing ceiling is already loose, when the coving has to come off anyway, or when ceiling height matters.
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Get a price for plastering in Longham
Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We will come out, look at the ceiling and sound the walls, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge.