Plastering in Post Green

Bungalows, so it is mostly ceiling work. Bungalows are common around Post Green and Lytchett Minster, so the ceiling is the largest single surface in the house and there is no floor above to work from.

On stock of this age the boards were nailed, not screwed, the fixings work loose, and the joints open in a straight line. Skimming over that buries the problem for a year. The boards go back tight with screws, the joints are taped, then two coats of finish plaster go on with a trowel. Where a board is soft or stained from a leak in a cold loft, a fresh layer of plasterboard over the top is quicker and far less mess than dropping the old ceiling into a furnished room.

The seventies and early eighties are the peak years for textured coatings, which is exactly this stock. A shallow pattern stuck fast can be skimmed straight over; heavy swirls get knocked back first, and a ceiling patched around a light fitting is better over-boarded. Anything textured from before 2000 can hold a small amount of asbestos, so it is sampled rather than sanded.

Walls in Post Green are a mixture, so we test before we quote. A dry lined wall can be filled, taped and skimmed as it stands. A solid plastered wall is a backing coat of browning or hardwall on brick or block, and where it has blown it comes off and the backing coat goes back first, or bonding where the background is a patchwork of chases and old repairs. The older cottages nearer the village are different again, solid walls that want to breathe, where lime is the right answer and gypsum is not. Whatever goes on, it is left to dry and given a thinned mist coat before you decorate.

Garage conversions and loft rooms are common in Post Green, because the plots are wide and the garages integral, and the insulation behind the board has to be seen by building control before it disappears, with an angle bead on every external corner and a stop bead at each reveal. Outside it is gables, chimneys and porches, much of it sand and cement and some of it pebbledash, which crazes with age and rings hollow once water gets behind a panel. A failed elevation comes off and goes back as a silicone thin coat or a monocouche off a bell cast bead. The exception is park homes: those are thin board on a timber frame and not a plastering job, and we will tell you so.

How much is coming off. Where the plaster rings solid, a thin finish over the top does the job. Where it sounds dead and hollow, it has parted from the blockwork and is taken back to bare wall, so the price carries a bonding or browning coat as well as the finish.

Bungalow ceilings. In a single storey home the ceilings are a big share of the area, and working overhead is slow. Textured artex from the seventies may hold asbestos, so a sample goes to a lab first; after that it is either new plasterboard fixed over the top and skimmed, or a skim straight onto it.

Getting materials in and waste out. A detached bungalow with a drive to the door, a semi on one of the closes with the van parked in the road, and a back extension reachable only through the kitchen are three different days of carrying.

External work. A bungalow gable is a tower job, a taller wall needs scaffold, and the work at height rules make that a priced line. Approved Document L can require better insulation behind a render being renewed. For the outside walls, see rendering in Post Green.

Damp first. Plaster blown by damp comes back unless the cause is dealt with: a leaking gutter, a bridged damp course, or a flower bed banked up against the wall.

Ask anyone else whether the old plaster comes off or gets skimmed over, which undercoat is specified, and whether the artex has been sampled.

Boscombe, where our base is, sits about nine and a half miles east of Post Green. We plaster in Post Green, Lytchett Minster, Lytchett Matravers, Upton, Holton Heath and Sandford, and the BH16 addresses along the Dorchester road; planning and building control there are Dorset Council's.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen owns the firm, and he looks at the room and prices the plastering in person. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10. The site visit and the written itemised quote are both free. Before you book a visit in Post Green, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Post Green 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.