Plastering in Ringwood
Skimming, ceilings, dry lining and external render across Ringwood, Poulner and the estates around the town.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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In Ringwood the first question is what your wall is made of, because the town has both kinds. A solid plastered wall in an older house sounds dull when you knock it and takes a skim straight over the top. A wall in a newer house sounds hollow almost everywhere, because the plasterboard is stuck to the blockwork on dabs of adhesive with a gap behind. That is normal, not a fault, and it is a different job.
Plaster in Ringwood goes wrong on textured ceilings, on walls painted once too often, and wherever water or cracking has done damage. A ceiling with a textured coating on it that has started to crack along the board joints. A room that has been papered and painted over tired plaster once too often and now wants skimming flat before it is decorated again. And damage, whether that is a wall soft and powdery after a leak from a flat above, or an outside elevation of render that has cracked.
All of it is our work, inside and out, and the making good comes with it, so nothing is left for your decorator. The site visit is free, the written quote is itemised, and where a morning of patching would do we will say so instead of quoting a room.
The work
Dry lining out at Poulner, solid plaster in town
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, not 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 Ringwood 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. For the outside walls, see rendering in Ringwood.
How it runs
Plastering a room, from survey to final skim
Thomas does the survey and the pricing in person, tapping every wall and ceiling, because a wall that sounds solid by the door and hollow by the window changes the job.
In the older houses in the centre that often means lath ceilings and lime backing coats; in the post-war and newer homes it is usually sand and cement or plasterboard with a gypsum skim. The written quote is itemised: protection, stripping, any new plasterboard, backing coats, skim, beads and waste.
One company takes the job start to finish. Floors and furniture are covered, the rooms are cleaned at the end of each day, and the waste leaves with us. In a flat, the communal stairs are protected and the rubble is carried down with care. If stripping shows rotten lath or a damp wall nobody could see, you get a photograph and a price first.
Plastering inside needs no planning permission. On a listed building consent can reach inside, down to a lime ceiling, so check other permissions you may need if yours is one. Outside, Planning Portal guidance on external walls sets the general position, and inside the Ringwood Conservation Area a change of external finish is worth checking with New Forest District Council.
Cost
Skim, float or strip back to brick
No rate per square metre, because what is behind the finish decides the job. The background. Sound old plaster that still grips the wall takes a skim. Plaster that has blown comes off, and a backing coat and float go back on. A lath ceiling can be repaired in lime or overboarded with plasterboard, and the choice changes the price.
Lime or gypsum. On pre-1900 solid walls, lime lets the wall breathe; gypsum over damp brick fails. Lime work takes more coats and more drying time, so more visits.
Flats. Many Ringwood homes are flats, some above shops in the centre and some in post-war blocks. Protecting common parts, carrying materials up and waste down the stairs, and working to the building's rules on hours all go into the price.
Outside. Rendering a full elevation needs a scaffold, which the work at height rules make a separate line. It also counts as renovating a thermal element, so Approved Document L can require the insulation behind it to be improved.
Ask anyone else whether they are skimming or stripping back, lime or gypsum, and whether the protection and waste removal are included in what they have written.
If it has started to come down
A ceiling bowing or plaster coming off in sheets
A ceiling that has started to bow, one soaked by a leak from the flat above, or plaster coming away from a wall in sheets needs looking at quickly. Keep out of the room, do not push at a bulge, and turn off the lights in that ceiling if water is involved.
Ring rather than using the form. Booked plastering runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, and if we miss your call, someone gets back to you the moment they can. Once we are there, what is loose comes down and what is not gets propped, and then we price the repair. Tell us how much has already come down.
Worth knowing
Why so many walls in Ringwood sound hollow
Knock a wall in one of the newer houses around Ringwood and it drums. It is easy to read that as blown plaster. Almost always it has not. From the seventies onwards the trade stopped plastering blockwork solid and started dry lining it: plasterboard pressed onto dabs of adhesive, with an air gap of a finger's width behind the board.
The whole wall sounds hollow because the whole wall is hollow. Blown plaster sounds different and it gives slightly under your hand, and there is usually a crack or a bulge to go with it. If your house went up in the last forty-odd years, hollow on its own is nothing.
It changes the practical side of living with the wall. First, fixings: a normal wall plug spins in the void, so shelves, radiators, televisions and kitchen units need either a plasterboard fixing rated for the load or a screw long enough to reach the block behind, and finding the dabs matters more than finding a stud. Second, repairs: a hole in a dry lined wall is a board patch and a skim, not a backing coat, and filling a large one with plaster alone leaves a hard cold spot you will see through the paint.
Third, damp: because there is a cavity behind the board, water from a leak can travel a surprising distance and appear in a different room, so we find the source before anything is replastered. On a solid wall in an older Ringwood house none of that applies, which is why the first thing we do is tap the wall.
Who you are dealing with
Who taps the walls and writes the price
Ringwood is an 8 mile trip from our base in Boscombe, and we plaster across BH24: the town centre, Poulner, Hightown, Ashley Heath, Hangersley and the villages along the Avon, as well as nearer home around Bournemouth.
Planning and building control are with New Forest District Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. Thomas Hannen is the owner, and he is the one who taps your walls and writes the price. On Checkatrade there is a verified 10 out of 10 from a customer of ours. You will not be charged for the site visit or the itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Ringwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Ringwood?
Most repairs in Ringwood 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 Ringwood |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest District Council is the planning authority for Ringwood. The National Park boundary runs close by, and the Park's property map shows which side an address falls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Ringwood Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Ringwood. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Ringwood. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Ringwood
Is Ringwood old enough that my walls are lime?
Some are. Just under a fifth of Ringwood's stock predates 1919 and the biggest single band is pre-1900, so lath ceilings and lime backing coats are a real possibility in the older houses here.
The rest, roughly a third of it put up between 1945 and 1982, is a sand and cement float with a gypsum finish over the top. I scratch a hidden corner at the site visit so nobody guesses, because the backing coat decides the material, not the finish.
Does Ringwood's conservation area affect rendering?
Largely, for the outside of an ordinary house. Re-rendering like for like is maintenance. The town centre is covered by the Ringwood Conservation Area, though, so a change of finish or colour on a front there is worth checking with New Forest District Council first. The bigger catch is the 61 listed entries scattered through Ringwood, the Meeting House and the Manor House among them. If your property is one of those, or joined to one, consent comes before any coating goes on.
Does the Avon nutrient rule affect plastering a loft room?
Not the plastering itself: Ringwood sits in the River Avon catchment, and the nutrient rule only engages where a scheme creates a new dwelling or a separate unit, so a loft bedroom in your existing house is not caught and nor is boarding and skimming a room you already have. If the loft is becoming a self-contained flat, settle the nutrient position with New Forest District before the boards go up, because plastering is the last trade in and the first one to get squeezed.
You are eight and a half miles away. How quickly can you look?
Ringwood is about eight and a half miles from our base, so it is a short run out and Thomas Hannen comes out for a first look at a time that suits you. He measures the room, checks what the existing backing coat actually is, and leaves you with a written itemised quote. The visit and the quote both cost nothing, and no materials get ordered until you have said yes to the written figure.
Where does the old plaster go when you strip a ceiling?
Into bags and out to the van the same day. A stripped lath ceiling in one of the older Ringwood properties produces far more spoil than a re-skim, because the laths, the nails and a century of dust all come down with it. We sheet the floor, bag as we go and take it away rather than piling it up in the garden. On a terrace frontage that avoids standing a skip on the street for a fortnight.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Ringwood
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Ringwood, and the other trades we offer in Ringwood itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Ringwood
Plastering and rendering guides
Silicone, cement or lime: which render? Cracked render: which cracks matter Hollow-sounding wall: blown plaster or dot and dabBuilders in Ringwood: all our building work Everything we do in Ringwood Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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Tell us which room, or send a photo of the ceiling, and we will book a look. The visit and the written quote cost nothing.