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.
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Most ceilings in Longham's bungalows 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, not a week of mess.
In Longham it is textured ceilings, board joints cracking across bungalow ceilings, and garages turned into rooms. 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, not 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 in Longham 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. The gypsum that suits everything else here is wrong on them.
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
Plastering a sixties or seventies house, start to finish
Thomas comes out, looks at each wall and ceiling in the rooms concerned, and prices the job himself. Houses in Longham are mostly from the sixties and seventies, so textured ceilings are common. Textured coatings of that age can contain asbestos, so a sample is tested before anyone scrapes or sands, and usually the ceiling is overboarded with new plasterboard and skimmed rather than disturbed.
The written price names each stage: dust sheets and protection, hacking off, plasterboard, bonding or backing coats, the finishing skim, angle beads, and making good round sockets and frames. The whole of it is one company's responsibility. Floors are sheeted and doorways taped shut, because plaster dust drifts through a bungalow hall into every room. Each evening the room is cleaned down, and the bags of waste go out to our van. When old plaster comes off wider than expected, Thomas sends you a picture and a figure, and waits.
Nothing inside needs planning permission, and with no conservation area over Longham, re-rendering a wall that is already rendered is normally permitted development too, though rendering or cladding bare brick may need permission; Planning Portal guidance on external walls shows where that stops. Building control applies if a garage becomes a room, or most of an elevation is re-rendered, under Approved Document L. Dorset Council covers both. For the outside walls, see rendering in Longham.
Cost
Skim, overboard or replaster: what sets the cost
Square metres alone will not price a plastering job. What is under the surface does. The background. Most walls in Longham are block with gypsum plaster on them. If that plaster is sound, a skim coat is quick. If it is hollow or blown after a leak, it has to come off and be replastered in bonding and skim, which is a much bigger job.
The ceilings. A plain ceiling in good order takes a skim. A textured ceiling that has to be tested and then overboarded with plasterboard before skimming is more work, and a ceiling already overboarded once may need taking down to the joists.
Rooms and furniture. An empty room is fast. A lived-in lounge with furniture to move and cover, or a bungalow hall with a loft hatch and a run of doorways, takes longer to protect and to finish neatly.
Garages. Plenty of bungalows in Longham have an attached garage. Turning one into a room means insulation, plasterboard and skim on walls never lined before, plus building control.
Getting in and out. A drive with parking at the door helps when bags of plaster come in and waste goes out.
Ask any other plasterer: is it a skim or a full replaster? What happens to a textured ceiling? Who takes the waste away?
If it has just gone
A ceiling come down, or plaster off after a leak
Ring rather than using the form. If a ceiling has dropped or is bulging after a leak, keep everyone out of the room and turn off the lights on that circuit if water is near a fitting.
If it is still dripping, find the source first, because plaster will not hold until the leak is stopped. The first visit makes the room safe: we take down anything hanging, check the joists and plasterboard, and cover what needs it. With a textured ceiling we leave the debris alone until we know what it is. Then we price the repair. Our working hours for planned jobs are Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. Something urgent? Ring, and if we miss you we call back.
Worth knowing
In bungalow country the ceiling is the job
More than a third of the houses in Longham 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 the plastering in one 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.
In a Longham bungalow, 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
The plasterer you deal with around Longham
We come out from Boscombe, 4.7 miles away, and cover Longham with Ferndown, West Parley, Hampreston, Stapehill and Bearwood. Dorset Council deals with building control for the village. Our company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, which is registered in England and Wales under company number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Longham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
It is Thomas Hannen's, and he comes to see the room in person before putting a price on it. There is a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on our Checkatrade page. You will not pay for the site visit, and the written quote with each item set out is free as well.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Longham?
Most repairs in Longham 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 Longham |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Longham. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Longham, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Longham. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Longham. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Longham
Bungalow country here. Does that change a ceiling job?
Bungalow country 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, not 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 a visit to look is easy to arrange, 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. 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.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Longham
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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.