Plastering in Lover
Plaster inside and render outside, across Lover, Redlynch and the SP5 lanes. We sound the wall before we price it, and the quote comes in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Inside your house is your own business here and needs no permission from anybody. Outside is different: Lover sits inside the New Forest National Park, and rendering an elevation that is bare brick today needs an application first, even though repairing render you already have does not.
Plastering around Lover means blown walls in older cottages, damaged ceilings and conversions being finished. A room in an older cottage where the plaster has blown low down on the wall and the paint keeps lifting above the skirting. A ceiling that has cracked or been damaged, often after a leak nobody spotted for a fortnight.
And the work that comes with an outbuilding or an extension being turned into somewhere you can sit, which is boarding, skimming and getting the corners straight. We come out, sound the walls and the ceiling, and say which of those you have. We are about eighteen miles out, so we plan jobs this side of the Forest in runs and give you a firm start date.
The work
The answer changes by address, not by village
The answer changes by address, not by village. The old cottages in this corner are solid brick with no cavity, plastered in lime straight onto the wall. When that plaster blows it goes at the bottom of the wall, because a solid wall dries through its own surface and a hard gypsum backing coat blocks the way out.
We take off only what has let go, put a haired lime backing coat back and finish it breathable, which is what the lime plaster on that wall was doing in the first place. On the post-war houses along the lanes the same wall is a cavity and gypsum is right, so the answer really does change from one address to the next.
Chimney breasts and woodburners. Off the gas main, a lot of houses in Lover heat with wood or oil, and a new liner and register plate usually leaves a chimney breast that wants making good. The recess and the area round the flue get a cement based backing rather than a gypsum one, because gypsum will not sit against that sort of heat, and the finish comes back level with the rest of the wall. Hairline cracks along the breast after the first winter of a new stove are a patch, not a rebuild.
In the cottages the ceiling is riven lath with the plaster keyed through it, and what fails is the key, not the surface. If most of it has gone it comes down, goes back in plasterboard and is skimmed. If it is sound and only tired we fix it from above and skim over, which is the cheaper answer more often than people think. Artex on the newer ceilings skims flat, and we never sand it.
Old stores and workshops turned into offices and spare rooms take dry lining on insulated plasterboard, fixed on dabs where the wall is solid, stud partitions, then tape and joint or a full skim, with angle bead on the corners and stop bead at every reveal. Anything that becomes a heated room brings building control with it. Outside there is painted sand and cement on brick, pebbledash on the post-war houses and lime render on the oldest walls, and all of them crack and go hollow at the top of the wall first: cut out, primed and repaired where the rest is sound, or taken back and put on again as a mesh reinforced basecoat with a silicone thin coat topcoat, or a through-coloured monocouche where you want no painting at all, over a bell cast bead with the scaffold priced separately. For the outside walls, see rendering in Lover.
How it runs
Plastering older walls: the way the job runs
Thomas comes out, looks at every wall and ceiling in the rooms concerned, taps for hollow spots and prices the work himself. If the house has solid walls or lath and plaster ceilings, he checks what the plaster is before anything is agreed, because lime plaster on a solid wall needs to stay breathable and a gypsum patch on it can hold damp.
The quote names protection, hacking off, any new lath or plasterboard, the backing coats, the finish and making good as separate items. All of it sits with one company. Floors are sheeted, doorways taped up, the rooms are cleaned down each day and the waste leaves with us. Lime work is left to cure properly between coats, so the visits are planned around it, which matters at 18.1 miles out. If a ceiling proves weaker than it looked, you get a photo and a price before we go further.
Nothing inside needs planning permission and there is no conservation area. On one of the parish's few listed buildings, consent reaches internal plaster too, and National Park heritage and conservation guidance is where to start. Wiltshire Council's building control gets involved when a room is created or an elevation is re-rendered, because Approved Document L treats that as renovating a thermal element.
Cost
Lime or gypsum, lath or board: the plastering price
A rate per square metre would not help. What is behind the surface decides the job. The wall behind. Solid brick with lime behind the plaster, a cavity wall with sound gypsum on it, and an outbuilding that has never been lined are three different prices for the same area. Lime needs several coats and time to cure between them.
Ceilings. An old lath and plaster ceiling that has sagged might be screwed back and repaired, or taken down and replaced with plasterboard and a skim. The first keeps the character and costs more in time. The second is quicker and messier on the day.
Damp. Plaster that failed because of damp will fail again unless the cause is dealt with: a gutter, a leaking joint, or a hard render outside. We look for that before pricing.
Rooms and access. An empty room is quick. A lived-in room full of furniture, or a converted store at the end of a long track, adds time. Parking matters too when bags and waste are carried in and out.
Distance. Lime work takes several visits, and at this distance that is planned into the quote, not added later.
Ask other quotes: what backing coat is going on, and why? Is it lime or gypsum? Who takes the waste away?
If it has just gone
A ceiling down or plaster off the wall
Ring rather than use the form. If a ceiling has dropped or is bulging, keep everyone out of the room and switch off the lights on that circuit if water is near them. An old lath and plaster ceiling is heavy and can come down in one piece, so do not stand under it.
If plaster has come off after a leak, stop the leak first where you can, because new plaster will not hold on a wet wall. The first visit makes it safe, takes down what is loose and covers what needs it, then we price the repair. Render off a gable is handled the same way. Our working week for booked jobs is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When a call goes unanswered, we ring the number back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Nothing inside needs asking; the outside answers to the Park
Nothing you do to the plaster inside your house here needs permission. The outside is what catches people out. Almost everywhere else you can render or clad a wall as permitted development, but inside a National Park you cannot. Lover sits within the New Forest boundary, so putting render on an elevation that is bare brick today is a planning application, and the National Park Authority decides it, not the council you pay your tax to.
Their interactive property map is the quickest way to see exactly where your address sits, because the boundary runs through this area, not around it.
What that changes is the order of things and the time of year. Repairing or renewing render already on the wall needs nothing, so most render work in Lover can start when you want it to. A change of finish does not: allow a couple of months from asking to starting, which means deciding in winter to work in spring.
The Authority is looking at how it will look, so colour and texture matter, and we will not order materials until it is granted. None of it touches the plastering inside, which can go ahead while you wait.
Who you are dealing with
Who plasters your rooms, and where we come from
We travel 18.1 miles from Boscombe to Lover, and plaster across SP5 from Redlynch, Morgan's Vale and Woodfalls to Nomansland and Downton. For building regulations the body is Wiltshire Council, and for planning, the National Park Authority.
The company, Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, is registered in England and Wales with the number 15471719. Thomas Hannen, its owner, comes to see the rooms and puts the price on them himself. There is a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on our Checkatrade page. You pay nothing for the survey, nor for the written quote setting out each item. Before you book a visit in Lover, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Lover?
Most repairs in Lover 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 Lover |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Lover. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Lover, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Lover. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Lover
Are we too far out at Lover for you to come?
Lover is 18.1 miles from the base, a longer run than most but well inside the area we work. What it changes is scheduling rather than whether we take the job on. Work out here gets booked in a block so materials arrive in one load and the days run consecutively instead of scattered across a fortnight. Thomas still comes out first, looks at it and writes the quote up, at no charge.
Will a gypsum backing coat hold on our old cottage wall?
Not on a wall that has to breathe, and the older cottages around Lover are exactly that sort of wall. Those are solid walls without a cavity, so moisture that gets in has to come back out through the surface. A hard cement or gypsum backing shuts that route, and the damp finds a weaker one instead, usually pushing the finish off at skirting level.
This far inland, is frost worse for render than salt?
It is. At 26.9km from the coast salt is not what attacks a wall here, but the exposed face still looks south west and takes the driven rain, and inland nights get colder than they do on the shore. Render or plaster that is still green when it freezes loses its strength for good and crumbles at the surface the following spring. That is why external work waits on the forecast.
The National Park covers Lover. Does outside work need approval?
It depends what you are doing to the outside, and the New Forest National Park Authority is who decides. Lover has no conservation area of its own and only 8 listed entries in the area, so most houses here escape the tighter controls. Repairing or renewing an existing render in the same material and colour is maintenance. A new look on a visible elevation is worth a conversation before you commit.
Does adding an annexe here bring in the Solent rules?
If it is somewhere for people to sleep, yes. Land here drains towards the Solent, and the nutrient rules apply to schemes that add overnight accommodation, so a self contained annexe engages them where a workshop or a store would not. It gets dealt with at planning stage and has nothing to do with the plastering itself. We come in once the permission is settled and the shell is up.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Lover
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Lover, and the other trades we offer in Lover itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Lover
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 Ringwood Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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Get a price for plastering in Lover
Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We will come out, sound the walls, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge, and no obligation.