Plastering in Ringwood

Dry lining out on the estates. A big share of Ringwood went up from the eighties onwards, out at Poulner and around the edge of the town, and those houses are dry lined rather than solid plastered. The board is already flat, so the job is preparation and two coats of finish: fill the screw heads, tape any open joints, seal a thirsty surface with PVA or a bonding primer, then lay it on and close it up. A bedroom is a day, and it is the room people put off longest.

Nearer the centre and along the older roads the houses are brick with plaster straight onto them, and the same room can be twice the work. Where the plaster is sound it takes a skim. Where it has blown it comes off back to the brick and a backing coat goes on first: browning or hardwall on solid brickwork, bonding where the background is a patchwork of brick, block and old infill, floated out and ruled straight before the finish coat. In the oldest of them it is lime on lath rather than gypsum, the wall is breathable and has to stay that way, and a hard skim over it will blow again.

Textured ceilings are everywhere in the post-war and eighties stock. Where the pattern is shallow and stuck fast we skim straight over it. Heavy swirl, or a ceiling somebody has already patched round a downlight, is better over-boarded and the joints taped. Anything textured that went on before 2000 can hold a trace of asbestos, so it is sampled rather than sanded, and boarding over it leaves it undisturbed.

Flats, and who can order the work. Close to three in ten homes in the town are flats or maisonettes, from converted town buildings to purpose-built blocks and retirement schemes, and they bring their own problems: a ceiling stained and blown after a leak from the flat above, an artexed hallway, a wall opened up by a plumber. Inside your own front door the work is yours to order. The outside walls, the render and the common parts usually belong to the freeholder and come out of the service charge, and a big block job on those is subject to section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, so if the damp is coming through an external wall the first call may be to the managing agent rather than to us.

Extensions, garage conversions and knock-throughs are dry lining on dot and dab where there is blockwork to fix to, board on stud where there is not, then tape and joint or a full skim. Angle bead on every external corner, stop bead at each window reveal, and the making good round a new opening so the join does not telegraph through the paint. Outside, pebbledash and sand and cement gets cut out and patched where the damage is local. Where it has largely let go we strip it and put back a thin coat silicone system: primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a coloured topcoat, with a bell cast bead at the base. On a solid old wall it is still scratch coat, render coat and float, in a mix soft enough to move.

There is no rate per square metre, because the background decides it. Sound old plaster still gripping the brick takes a skim. A wall that has blown comes off, which brings a backing coat and a float back into the job. In a flat, protecting the common parts and carrying waste down goes in the price. Outside, a full elevation wants a scaffold, which is why work at height rules make access its own line, and re-rendering one counts as renovating a thermal element, so Approved Document L can ask for the insulation behind it to be improved. Ask whether it is a skim or a strip back to brick.

We cover Ringwood and Poulner across the BH24 postcode, out to Ashley Heath, Hangersley and the villages along the Avon, and we work across east Dorset, the New Forest and the coast from a base near Bournemouth. 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 visit and the written quote are both free.