Plastering in Post Green

Bungalows, so it is mostly ceiling work. Getting on for a third of the homes around Post Green and Lytchett Minster are bungalows, 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 rather than 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 here 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 rather than gypsum is the right answer. Whatever goes on, it is left to dry and given a thinned mist coat before you decorate.

Garage conversions and loft rooms are common here, 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, and we get asked: those are thin board on a timber frame and not a plastering job, so we say so rather than take the work.

There is no rate per square metre. Old plaster still stuck fast takes a skim; a hollow wall comes off and brings a backing coat back into the job. In a bungalow the ceilings are most of the job and every trowel stroke is overhead. A detached bungalow with a drive and a side gate, a semi on one of the closes with the van out on the road, and a rear extension reached only through the kitchen are three different jobs. A tower does for a bungalow gable and a scaffold is 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.

We cover Post Green, Lytchett Minster, Lytchett Matravers, Upton, Holton Heath and Sandford, and the BH16 addresses along the Dorchester road, with Dorset Council for planning and building control. Send the postcode if you want to be sure it is us and not somebody two counties away.

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.