Plastering in New Milton
Ceiling skims, textured coatings taken back, dry lining, making good after other trades and render across New Milton, priced in writing after a free visit.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Ceilings here are plasterboard nailed to joists and walls are a backing coat on brick or block, because New Milton is largely post-war and eighties housing. Both take a fresh finish over the top once the fixings and the joints have been sorted, which is why nearly everything is a skim rather than a strip out. Render on the seaward side is the one job that is genuinely different.
People ring us about four things in New Milton. A ceiling that has gone shabby, with nail heads pushing little domes through the paint and a hairline crack running dead straight across it. A textured coating from the seventies that everyone has finally had enough of. Walls left in a state by another trade, usually after new windows or a rewire. And a rendered elevation facing the sea that has crazed and sounds hollow when you tap it.
All four are ordinary work and none of them is a whole-house job unless you want it to be. We come out, tap the walls and ceilings, tell you what is actually loose and what only looks tired, and put the price in writing. The visit and the itemised quote are free, and we will tell you when a room only needs decorating.
The work
The boards were nailed, and the nails have let go
The boards were nailed, and the nails have let go. On the post-war and eighties stock across the town the ceiling boards were nailed rather than screwed, so the nails work loose and push a small dome through the finish, and the joint between two boards opens as a straight hairline. Skimming over that buries it for a year. The boards go back tight with screws first, the joints are taped, then two coats of finish plaster go on with a trowel. Where boards are sagging or have been soaked by a leak from the flat above, and a quarter of the homes here are flats, a fresh layer of plasterboard over the top is quicker and far less mess than pulling the old ceiling down.
Textured coatings are common on ceilings of this age. A shallow pattern stuck fast can be skimmed straight over, heavy swirls get knocked back first, and a ceiling patched round a light fitting is better over-boarded. Anything textured put up before 2000 can contain a little asbestos, so it is sampled rather than sanded, and boarding over leaves it undisturbed.
Behind the paper on most houses here is brick or block with a backing coat of browning or hardwall and a thin finish over it. Sound walls get prepared, sealed and skimmed; hollow patches come off and the backing coat goes back first, floated out and ruled level, and once the finish has dried out a thinned mist coat goes on before you decorate, because new plaster drinks the first coat. A lot of our work in the town is making good behind somebody else: new windows leave the reveals and sills to be re-formed with fresh stop bead, a rewire leaves chases, and a removed chimney breast leaves a scar across two rooms.
The plots have room around them, so there are plenty of extensions, garage conversions and loft rooms, where the board goes on dot and dab or screwed to a stud, then tape and joint or a full skim, and the insulation sits behind the board and has to satisfy building control before it is covered. Outside it is gables, dormer cheeks and whole elevations, much of it sand and cement and a good deal of it pebbledash, and under three miles from the sea the weather comes at it off the south west. Cracked panels are cut out and patched; where most of an elevation rings hollow it comes off and goes back as a thin coat system with a bell cast bead at the base.
How it runs
How we work, and what you get in writing
Same team from the first visit to the last, one number to ring, and none of it sub-contracted out. The quote is itemised: what comes off, how each background is prepared, the beads, the backing coat, the finish coat, the making good and the waste. There is no conservation area over New Milton and the nine listed entries here are mostly farm buildings and the church rather than family houses, so an external finish is normally your own choice. Building control is what bites instead, because turning a garage or a loft into a room is building work. New Forest District Council, and we check the address anyway.
Cost
What actually decides the price
There is no rate per square metre. Old plaster still stuck fast takes a skim; a hollow wall has blown off the brick and has to come off, which brings a backing coat back into the job. A bungalow off Ashley Road with a drive and a side gate, a terraced house with the van out on the road, and a first floor flat with a shared stair are three different jobs. Low work comes off a tower and a full elevation wants a scaffold, a priced line under the work at height rules, and Approved Document L can ask for the insulation behind a renewed render to be improved.
If it has started to come down
A blown ceiling, or water damage from upstairs
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that has begun to bow, or plaster coming off a wall in sheets, goes to the front of the queue. Do not sleep in a room under a bulging ceiling. We are ten miles along the coast road, so a New Milton call is normally looked at the same day or the next. If a flat above has leaked, get the water off first.
Worth knowing
Render on the seaward side is a different specification
New Milton sits under two miles from the beach and the weather comes off the sea from the south west, so one or two elevations of your house take a beating that the rest never see. The walls that fail here are the south west gable, the chimney and anything above a bay.
Rigid sand and cement render is brittle, and repeated wetting with salt in the water opens hairline crazing, then water gets behind a panel and it sounds hollow when you tap it. Paint over that and you seal the water in and lose the panel faster.
On an exposed wall we would rather put back a thin coat system than a rigid one: a primer, a basecoat with mesh embedded in it so movement does not telegraph through as a crack, and a silicone topcoat that sheds driven rain but still lets the wall dry outwards. A bell cast bead at the bottom and proper stop bead at the reveals matter more here than the colour does, because wind driven rain finds the edges first. Two pieces of practical advice.
If the budget only stretches to part of it, do the seaward elevation properly rather than all four cheaply. And render will not go on in frost or a strong wind, so a January quote may well be a March start, which is worth knowing before you chase somebody who promises otherwise. Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets out the few cases where changing an external finish needs permission at all.
Who you are dealing with
The firm behind the work
We cover New Milton, Barton on Sea, Bashley, Milford on Sea, Everton and the BH25 addresses either side of the railway, with New Forest District Council for planning and building control. Send us the postcode if you want to be certain.
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 site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.
Questions
New Milton questions we get asked
A third of New Milton is 1980s. Any plastering quirks?
The main one is dry lining. Around a third of the housing here dates from 1983 onwards, with the 1980s the single biggest decade, and by then boards on adhesive dabs had replaced a wet backing coat on blockwork. That means hollow walls throughout, taped joints instead of solid plaster, and repairs that involve cutting a board section out rather than filling. Hanging anything heavy needs a proper fixing back to the blockwork behind.
Ours is a terrace. Will the neighbours feel the ceiling work?
They will hear it. A quarter of the housing in New Milton is terraced and another quarter is flats, so most jobs here have somebody the other side of a wall or under the floor. Bringing a ceiling down is the loud part and we keep it to normal working hours. Give the neighbours a day's notice. Where a party wall is being cut into rather than skimmed, that has to be settled before we start.
The window fitters are coming. Who sorts out the reveals?
We do, once they have finished and the frames are sealed. Following a window job is one of the commonest calls in New Milton, because so much of the stock is 1980s and the original units are all being swapped now. Reveals and the internal sill get made good, and where the render outside has been chopped we patch it in a matching finish rather than leaving a grey band round the frame.
Under two miles from the sea. Does salt reach us?
It does, at just under three kilometres inland, though not as hard as on the front itself. In practice that means beads and any other metal in the render corrode from the exposed edge inwards while the face still looks sound, so a corner stains and then breaks away. Stainless beads go on the south west facing walls for that reason. Rust marks running down from an arris are the sign to watch for.
What happens to a ceiling once it comes down?
It leaves in bags along a sheeted route, straight into the van. Old bonded ceilings are heavy and full of decades of dust, so the room is emptied or covered, doorways are taped, and an extractor runs in the window while the boards come off. Carpets get sheeted and lifted at the edges wherever skirting is coming away. None of it sits in a pile on the drive overnight.
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Plastering and rendering near New Milton
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Get a written price for your New Milton plastering
Send the postcode and tell us which rooms or which elevation. We come out, tap it, and put the price in writing with the days it will take.