Plastering in Lyndhurst
Ceilings, lime work, skimming and render across Lyndhurst and the middle of the Forest. 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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Before anything gets hacked off in Lyndhurst, find out whether the house is listed. Consent covers plaster inside the building as well as the front of it, and a lath and plaster ceiling is exactly the sort of thing it protects even though nobody outside can see it.
Lyndhurst plastering ranges from sagging ceilings in older houses to flats and lets that need turning round and frontage render gone hollow. A ceiling in an older house that has cracked and started to sag, dropping dust every time a door shuts. A room in a flat over a shop, or in a let, that needs replastering and putting back into use quickly. And painted render on a frontage that has crazed and gone hollow after a wet winter.
We come out, sound the walls, get a hand up at the ceiling, and tell you what is actually loose before anyone talks about taking anything down. About four in ten houses in Lyndhurst were built before 1919, so the answer is more often repair than replacement.
The work
The bottom metre is where it always goes
The bottom metre is where it always goes. Getting on for two fifths of Lyndhurst predates 1919: Victorian and Edwardian brick with no cavity, plastered in lime, and the failure is always the bottom metre. Hollow under a knuckle, paint lifting, sometimes a white bloom of salts.
A solid wall dries out through its own surface, so gypsum and a plastic paint over it push the water somewhere else. We hack off only what has let go, put back a haired lime backing coat, a scratch coat and a render coat where the wall is bare, and a breathable finish coat over it.
Ceilings of the same age are riven laths with the plaster squeezed through to form a key on the back, and it is the key that fails, not the surface. You see it as a bow across the middle of the room and a hairline crack following the joists. Where most of the key has gone the ceiling comes down and goes back in plasterboard, taped and skimmed, which is a day for a bedroom. Where it is largely sound the cheaper and better answer is to fix it from above, tighten it back to the joists and skim the face, and on a listed house that is usually the only answer allowed.
Flats over the shops, and rooms in lets. Plenty of the homes in Lyndhurst are flats, a lot of them over a business or taking visitors, and that changes the job more than the plaster does. We work a room at a time, carry in and out through a shared stair without blocking the pavement, and plan the drying around a booking or a changeover so you are not left with a room out of use in August. Bathrooms and kitchens get moisture resistant board first, then a skim.
Cracked and hollow render on a High Street elevation gets tapped out, cut back to sound edges, primed and patched to match the original profile, then finished breathable so the wall behind can still dry. Out along the Romsey Road the same wall is sand and cement render or pebbledash, and where a third or more 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. For the outside walls, see rendering in Lyndhurst.
The rest is dry lining on dot and dab, stud partitions, tape and joint or a full skim, angle bead on every external corner and stop bead where plaster stops at a reveal. Artex ceilings on the post-war houses skim flat in two passes and we never sand one, and the making good after a rewire, a leak or new windows usually takes a morning.
How it runs
Lath and lime repairs, and skimming where it suits
Thomas comes out and surveys every wall and ceiling in the rooms involved. In Lyndhurst's Victorian and older houses that usually means lime plaster on lath ceilings and on solid brick walls, which is repaired in lime so the wall can keep breathing. In the post-war houses and later extensions it is plasterboard and gypsum, which can be skimmed. The itemised quote covers protection, taking down or hacking off, lath repair or boarding, the backing coats, the finish, and waste.
The quote and the work are one company's responsibility. Floors and stairs are covered and dust is kept to the room. Lime goes on in thin coats with drying time between each, so we tell you at the start how many days the room will be out of use. The room is swept every evening and the waste leaves with us. If a ceiling is hanging off failed nails, or the laths behind a wall have rotted, we show you and price it before a single lath comes down.
Work inside an ordinary house needs no planning permission, and repairing render like for like is repair. Changing the outside is different here. The whole parish is inside the National Park, where the usual permitted development rights for cladding and render are narrower, and a conservation area narrows them further; Planning Portal guidance on external walls explains where the line falls. Re-rendering a full elevation brings building control in, since Approved Document L treats it as renovating a thermal element. The National Park Authority decides the planning side and New Forest District Council the building control.
Cost
Lime on lath, or board and skim: plastering costs
Plastering an old house cannot sensibly be priced per square metre. What is behind it. Lime plaster on lath, solid brick that has been damp for years, and a boarded wall in an eighties extension look the same from the doorway and are very different jobs. Lime repairs take longer, with each coat left to cure, but on an old house they are the right answer.
Damp. Gypsum on a solid wall that needs to breathe traps moisture and fails. If the wall is wet, the cause outside is fixed first and the wall is then plastered in lime.
How much comes down. A skim is a short job. Taking down a lath ceiling makes a great deal of dust and waste, all of which has to be bagged and carried out.
Getting in. A flat over a High Street shop with a shared stair and nowhere to park, a semi on the Romsey Road with a side passage, and a house at Emery Down with its own drive each change how materials come in.
Before you compare prices, check what each plasterer has allowed for: a skim or a full replaster, lime or gypsum, and getting rid of the waste.
If it has just gone
A lath ceiling that has dropped, or plaster that has let go
If a ceiling is sagging, bulging with water or has cracked right across, get everyone out of the room and switch off the lights on that circuit. Old lath and plaster ceilings are heavy and can come down in one piece.
If part has already fallen, leave the rest alone. Phone rather than using the form; we would rather come and prop a ceiling than talk you through it. The first visit makes the room safe and finds the cause, and the repair is priced once it has dried. Plastering is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. When we cannot pick up, we call back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
On a listed house, consent reaches inside
Lyndhurst has around thirty listed entries in and about the village, most of them along the High Street and the lanes off it, and people are often surprised by how far the protection reaches. Listed building consent is not about the front elevation. It covers the whole building, inside included, so taking down a lath and plaster ceiling, stripping a cornice or hacking historic plaster off a wall can all need consent even though no one outside would ever know.
It is enforceable, and it stays with the building rather than with whoever did the work, which is why it surfaces years later when the house is sold. The National Park heritage and conservation guidance is the place to start.
In practice it changes the method. It does not stop the work. On a listed ceiling we would repair and secure what is there instead of pulling it down, patch in lime, not gypsum, so the new work behaves like the old, and keep mouldings and cornices in place and work around them.
The method goes on the written quote as well as the price, so you have something to show a conservation officer. And if your house is in the conservation area but not listed, the inside is your own business: only what can be seen from outside is controlled, which is worth getting straight before somebody quotes you for the cautious version of a simple job.
Who you are dealing with
Who plasters walls and ceilings in the village
Our base in Boscombe is 14.9 miles from Lyndhurst. We plaster in the village and at Bank, Emery Down, Swan Green, Minstead, Ashurst and Brockenhurst, across SO43 and the middle of the Forest, with the National Park Authority deciding planning.
The company is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen runs the business, and he looks at the plaster and prices the work himself. Checkatrade shows one verified customer's 10 out of 10. The survey and the written itemised quote are free. Before you book a visit in Lyndhurst, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Lyndhurst?
Most repairs in Lyndhurst 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 Lyndhurst |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Lyndhurst. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Lyndhurst Conservation Area and Swan Green Conservation Area. They cover parts of Lyndhurst, so check whether your street is inside one. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Lyndhurst. 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 Lyndhurst
Lyndhurst is a conservation area. Does that reach inside the house?
No, it stops at the outside. A conservation area protects the external character of the place, so it has something to say about render, colour and materials on the face of a building and nothing at all about the plaster on your living room wall. What does reach inside is listing, and there are 31 listed entries here including the Church of St Michael and All Angels and the Queen's House.
Will a gypsum skim stay on a lime and lath wall?
Not reliably: a lot of Lyndhurst was built before 1900, so lime on lath is normal here, not unusual. Gypsum is harder and less forgiving than what is behind it, and where the background still holds moisture the new coat traps it and lets go in sheets. The backing decides whether it stays up, not the finish you see.
Do you strip the old lime off, or patch around it?
Whatever is still firmly attached stays. Sound old work is often better bonded than anything we would put back, so the loose material gets cut out to a firm edge, the gap is built up in coats to the same thickness, and the repair is worked flush, not proud. Going back to bare masonry when only a third of a wall has failed makes the job bigger and the result no better.
Do the National Park planners handle this, or the district council?
The Authority does. Lyndhurst sits inside the New Forest National Park boundary, so applications go there rather than to the district, and that holds for external work and for listed building consent alike. It does not hold for internal plastering, which needs no application from anybody. Getting the right body first saves a fortnight of being passed from one office to another.
Why does a lime finish take more visits than gypsum?
Because lime sets by carbonating slowly rather than going off chemically within the hour. Each coat goes on thinner, is scratched to key the next, and has to firm up before the following one, which puts days between visits instead of minutes. On the old solid walls that make up most of this village, that patience is what stops the work cracking or blowing later. Gypsum is quicker and will not last on them.
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Plastering near Lyndhurst
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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.