Plastering in Minstead

Lime takes a week where gypsum takes two days. The older cottages along the lanes and around the green have soft lime plaster on riven lath overhead and lime on a solid wall of brick, cob or rubble below. It is repaired, not replaced.

Loose material comes off back to a firm edge, split or missing lath is renewed, and it goes back in coats: a haired backing coat pushed through the lath so it forms keys, a float coat ruled flat, then a fine finish. It is slower than gypsum because every coat has to go off before the next, so a room takes a week, not two days, and it wants leaving before a mist coat and decorating, and it stays breathable, which is the whole point of it.

Damp patches and blown plaster are the usual failure in these Minstead cottages, and the usual cause is a repair somebody did in good faith. Cement render outside or a gypsum patch inside traps moisture in a solid wall, the water moves sideways, and the plaster around the repair goes hollow and salty. Tap it and you can hear the edge of the problem. We take off what has blown, find out what is holding the water in, and let the wall dry before anything new goes on. Anyone offering to skim over it next week is selling you the same job twice.

A lath ceiling that has lost its keys sags in a bay between joists and cracks in a curve rather than a straight line. If most of it is sound we cut out the loose section, re-fix and patch. If it moves when you press it, taking it down and boarding fresh is cleaner and lasts, and where the ceiling follows old beams the boards are cut round them and the edges beaded. That is a dusty day, so everything comes out of the room before we start.

New work is extensions, garden rooms and old outbuildings brought into use. That is board on dot and dab or on stud, finished in tape and joint or skimmed, with an angle bead on every corner, and a blown patch inside comes off for a bonding, browning or hardwall backing coat. The insulation goes in behind the board, so it is worth settling that with building control before the boards are ordered. Outside, an old solid wall wants a lime render or a breathable thin coat system with a bell cast bead at the base so water drips clear of the plinth. For the outside walls, see rendering in Minstead. On a modern blockwork extension a scratch coat, render coat and float is still perfectly good, and patching pebbledash is possible and never invisible, which we say before you decide.

Plastering in Minstead has no rate per square metre. What the old plaster is doing decides the job. The state of the wall. Plaster still gripping the background takes a skim. A wall that sounds hollow has to come off, and then a backing coat goes back on before the finish, which adds a good deal of work to that wall. Lath and plaster ceilings are their own decision: overboard with plasterboard, or repair in lime.

Lime or gypsum. An old solid wall that has to breathe wants lime, applied in thinner coats and left between them. Gypsum on that wall traps damp. Lime takes longer, so it costs more in time.

Access and carrying. A cottage on a lane with no parking and a barn conversion up a long track both mean every bag in and every barrow out is carried. A stair hall or a high barn ceiling wants a tower inside, and outside work needs a scaffold, a priced line under the work at height rules.

External render. Where render is renewed on the outside, Approved Document L can ask for the insulation behind it to be improved.

Ask a second plasterer whether the hollow areas are being hacked off or skimmed over, what the backing coat is, and whether making good around sockets and skirtings is included.

We plaster in Minstead, Lyndhurst, Cadnam, Bartley and the SO43 lanes nearby. Building control on this side of the Forest is New Forest District Council, and planning is the National Park Authority. From Boscombe, where we are based, Minstead is 15.6 miles.

You can check company number 15471719 at Companies House: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales. The owner, Thomas Hannen, comes to see the walls and works out the plastering price himself. Checkatrade lists a verified customer's score of 10 out of 10. The visit is free, as is the written quote with each item listed. Before you book a visit in Minstead, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Minstead 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.