Plastering in Owermoigne
Lime plaster on old solid walls, lath ceilings, damp walls put right, barn conversions, dry lining and render around Owermoigne, 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.
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In Owermoigne the first question is not what finish you want, it is what the wall is made of. Old cob, brick and chalk rubble walls have no cavity and dry out through their own surface, so they take lime. Anything built on blockwork takes an ordinary backing coat and a skim. Get that decision right and the finish lasts; get it wrong and it blows within two winters.
Plastering work in Owermoigne falls into a small number of shapes. Plaster going hollow and salty along the bottom of a wall in an old cottage. A ceiling that has cracked or dropped where the lath has let go. A barn, a garage or an old outbuilding being turned into somewhere to live, all boarding and beads and fresh corners. And the tidy modern houses on the edge of the village wanting a ceiling skimmed or a textured coating taken back.
We come out, tap the walls and ceilings, and tell you which of those you have got and what it genuinely needs. The visit and the written itemised quote are free. If the address turns out to be listed, we say so at the visit, because that changes the order things happen in.
The work
Cement on cob traps damp in old walls
Cement on cob causes much of the damp in old walls. The cottages around Church Lane and the lanes off the main road are cob, brick or chalk rubble under the render, and they were plastered with lime for a reason.
We take off what has blown back to a firm edge, damp the background down so it does not suck the water out of the mix, and put it back in coats. It will never be laser flat and it should not be, because a wall that has moved for two hundred years reads as wrong when you rule it dead straight. The one thing we will not do is put cement onto cob. For the outside walls, see rendering in Owermoigne.
Damp along the bottom of a wall is the usual trouble in a cob and rubble village like Owermoigne, and it is very often not what the leaflet says. An old wall with no damp proof course was built to cope, and it does cope until something stops it drying: a sand and cement render skirt outside, a path laid up over the plinth, a gypsum patch inside, or a downpipe soaking one spot for years. We look for that first. The plaster comes off, the cause is dealt with, the wall gets a few weeks to dry, and then lime goes back, left to dry properly before a mist coat goes on and the room is decorated.
In the older cottages the ceilings are lath and plaster between exposed beams, so a sagging bay is cut out and patched in, or the ceiling comes down and is boarded fresh with the boards cut round the beams. There is a fair amount of farm building brought into use around Owermoigne, and that is dry lining, board on dot and dab where the blockwork is flat and dry or on a stud where it is not, then tape and joint or a full skim, with the insulation behind the board settled with building control before the boards are ordered. Outside, an old wall takes a lime render finished with limewash or a breathable paint, and modern blockwork takes a scratch coat, render coat and float, or a silicone thin coat or a monocouche with a bell cast bead at the base.
How it runs
Plastering in an older village house
Thomas comes out and checks every wall and ceiling himself, knocking for hollow patches and looking for damp. The quote separates what gets stripped, the preparation each background needs, beads, the backing coat and the finish coat, making good, and waste.
In an older house the walls may be lime plaster on solid brick or stone, and the ceilings lath and plaster. Those want lime or a breathable plaster rather than gypsum, or damp gets trapped in the wall. A newer house usually has plasterboard, which takes a skim. Floors and furniture are sheeted, rooms are cleaned each evening, and the waste goes with us. Coming 20 miles, we bring everything on the first day. Anything uncovered that nobody could have seen stops the job for a photograph and a price.
Dorset Council is the planning authority and the building control body here. Plastering inside an ordinary unlisted house does not need planning permission. Around the historic core, which is a conservation area, a new external finish is worth checking with the council first. On the thirteen listed entries in Owermoigne, listed building consent covers inside work too.
Cost
Old walls take longer to plaster, and here is why
No two walls in an older house behave the same, so there is no rate per square metre. Skim or strip. Knock on the wall. If the old plaster is still gripping, a skim over it is enough. If it sounds hollow, it has let go of the brick and has to come off, which puts a backing coat back into the job. Lime takes longer again, because each coat is left to cure before the next.
Lath ceilings. A lath ceiling that has sagged can sometimes be pinned back and repaired. If it is too far gone it comes down and is replaced with plasterboard or new lath, and the dust from that has to be planned for.
Access. An older cottage on a village lane with nowhere to park, and a converted barn up a farm track, both mean every bag carried in and every barrow of rubble carried out. Low outside work comes off a tower; a full elevation needs a scaffold, which is priced on its own line under the work at height rules.
Insulation. Approved Document L can ask for the insulation behind a renewed render, or behind most of an outside wall being re-plastered, to be improved.
Ask other plasterers whether the quote is lime or gypsum, how many coats it allows, whether the beads and the making good are in it, and who clears the waste.
If it has started to come down
A lath ceiling sagging, or plaster blown off the wall
If a ceiling is starting to bow, clear the room and leave it alone rather than pressing it to see. If there is water behind it, switch off the electrics to that room if you can reach the board safely.
Do not pull an old lath ceiling down yourself: on a listed house that needs consent, and it may well be repairable. Ring us. When we arrive we make it safe with props or by bringing down the loose sections, then price the repair when the leak or whatever caused it has been dealt with. Scheduled plastering runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For this, a phone call is the right route, and if it goes unanswered we will ring you as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
On a listed cottage, consent covers the inside too
Owermoigne has thirteen listed entries in and around the village, from the parish church and Moignes Court to farmhouses and the cottages on Church Lane, which is a lot for a village this size. The part people get wrong is that listing is not a rule about the front elevation. It covers the whole building, inside included, and often the outbuildings and walls within its curtilage.
So taking down a lath and plaster ceiling and boarding it, or hacking off internal lime plaster and reskimming in gypsum, is alteration to a listed building and wants listed building consent first. Doing it without is an offence rather than a form you catch up on later, and it is the owner who carries it.
In practice this is less frightening than it sounds and it mostly changes the order of things. Like-for-like repair in matching materials, lime on lime, a patched ceiling rather than a new one, is usually treated as repair and is the route we push you towards anyway because it is the right way to treat the wall. What needs consent is change: a different material, a different finish, or a ceiling that goes from lath to board.
So before anything is stripped, check whether the address is on the list and whether an attached barn or a garden wall goes with it, and ring the conservation officer with a photograph rather than a plan, since they will usually tell you which of the two you are in. We quote both routes where it is a genuine choice, and we take photographs of what is there before we touch it, which is the evidence you want if anyone asks later.
Who you are dealing with
The plasterer you will actually deal with
We cover Owermoigne, Crossways, Warmwell, Winfrith Newburgh, Wool and the DT2 addresses along the main road, 22 miles from our base in Boscombe. Dorset Council handles planning, listed building consent and building control. This is Thomas Hannen's business, and he looks at the walls and ceilings and prices the job himself.
You can check company number 15471719: Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales. On Checkatrade our score from a verified customer is 10 out of 10. The site visit is free of charge, as is the itemised written quote. Before you book a visit in Owermoigne, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Owermoigne?
Most repairs in Owermoigne 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 Owermoigne |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Owermoigne. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Owermoigne Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Owermoigne. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Owermoigne. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Owermoigne
Moignes Court is up the road. Are cottages here listed too?
Some are. Owermoigne carries thirteen listed entries, Moignes Court and the Parish Church of St Michael among the better known of them, and in a village this size listing reaches past the landmarks into ordinary cottages. Dorset Council will confirm the status of a particular address. On a listed building, removing historic plaster or changing a render needs consent first, and internal fabric counts every bit as much as the elevation.
The plaster at skirting level is powdery. What is happening?
Salts, usually, drawn up through the wall and left behind in the plaster as the water evaporates out of it. That is why the damage stops at a level line instead of spreading upwards. Replastering on its own buys a year or two and no more. The source has to be dealt with, the contaminated plaster cut out well above the tide mark, and a backing used that copes with salts instead of a straight gypsum skim.
We are twenty two miles out. Do you take the waste away?
Yes, it goes in the van when we leave. Owermoigne is a twenty two mile run from our base, so we are not making a second trip for a skip, and there is little sense standing one on a village verge for a week. Old plaster, laths, broken board and the sheeting all go together in one load. What stays behind is a swept room and the furniture put back where it started.
How do you tell a solid wall from a cavity one?
Measure at a window or door reveal. Around three hundred millimetres through with no gap is solid, while a cavity wall is thicker and has a clear break in it. The brickwork gives it away too, because a solid wall shows headers laid across the bond and a cavity wall shows stretchers only. It matters because a solid wall wants a breathable backing coat, and sealing one up is what causes damp to appear inside.
We are making the outbuilding habitable. Anything to know?
The plastering is the straightforward part. Owermoigne drains to the Poole Harbour catchment, so where a scheme creates new overnight accommodation Dorset Council applies nutrient neutrality, and an annexe somebody can sleep in counts as that. Repairs and replastering to the existing house do not. Finish the permission side before we board out, because the insulation and the board specification often change once building control has seen the drawings.
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Plastering near Owermoigne
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Get a written price for plastering in Owermoigne
Send the postcode and tell us which rooms. We come out, tap the walls and ceilings, and put the price in writing with the days it will take.