Plastering in Sixpenny Handley
Skimming, re-plastering, ceilings, lime work and external render across Sixpenny Handley and the SP5 villages, out through Woodcutts, Deanland and Pentridge.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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The first question on any plastering job in Sixpenny Handley is whether the old surface is sound enough to skim or whether it has to come off first. We tap the walls and ceilings through before pricing anything, tell you which of the two it is, and put that in writing.
Plaster failure in Sixpenny Handley is easy enough to read. Wallpaper comes off ahead of decorating and half the face of the plaster comes with it. A damp patch keeps returning through fresh paint on the same wall. Or a ceiling starts to sag and drop grit on the carpet, which in an older cottage means the plaster has parted company with the lath behind it.
What we do about it starts at the bottom rather than the top. Work out why the surface failed, deal with that, then pick the backing coat that suits the wall you actually have. Skimming over a wall that is still wet or already hollow is fast, cheap and back again within two winters. We are seventeen miles up the road, so we come out with what the job needs on the van.
The work
Thirty years of paper takes the finish with it
Thirty years of paper takes the finish with it. The first thing to look at in Sixpenny Handley. Layers of paper come off and take the finish coat with them, leaving a wall that is sound underneath but no longer flat. We prepare and stabilise it, bead any external corner that has been knocked about, and skim it out flat and ready to decorate.
The older cottages in Sixpenny Handley are flint and chalk block, some of them cob, under a soft render. Those are solid walls with no cavity, built to let moisture pass through and dry out again. Put a hard sand and cement render or a gypsum skim across the face and the moisture leaves somewhere else instead, usually as a blown patch a foot further along. They take a lime backing coat and a breathable finish. The ceilings in them are lime pushed through riven lath, and a century and a half of movement snaps the keys off. Where a ceiling is only cracked we overboard and skim, which keeps the original in place. Where it is bellied and moving it comes down, the joists get checked, and it goes back in board, tape and joint, then skim.
Nothing stands between these downland villages and the weather coming across the chalk, and it lands on render. We sound the wall for hollow areas, cut out what has let go, and either patch into the existing or take the elevation back to a scratch coat, a mesh reinforced basecoat, a bell cast bead at the bottom and a silicone thin coat topcoat. Thin coat systems belong on modern blockwork; on a solid old wall it is lime render instead. For the outside walls, see rendering in Sixpenny Handley. Farm buildings turned into houses want dry lining rather than wet plaster, and making good the chased and broken edges after new windows or a rewire is what stops the repair showing through the paint.
How it runs
Plastering a room, from dust sheets to the final skim
Thomas Hannen makes the drive from Boscombe to Sixpenny Handley and goes round the walls and ceilings himself. He taps them to find hollow patches, checks whether the plaster is lime or gypsum, and looks for damp that would spoil new work. An old cottage with lime plaster on solid walls needs a different approach from a newer house finished in plasterboard.
The quote is written and itemised: preparation, anything hacked off, the backing coat, beads, the skim, making good, and waste. One company sees it through from start to finish. Doorways are sealed with dust sheets before anything is taken down, floors are covered, and the old plaster leaves with us each day. If we take off a wall and find rotten lath or a wet patch behind, we show you a photo and give you a price before carrying on.
Inside work needs no planning permission. For outside work Dorset Council is the authority, and the National Landscape designation over Cranborne Chase means a change of finish is looked at harder. The listed buildings in Sixpenny Handley need listed building consent for plaster work, inside or out. If a whole outside wall is re-rendered, Approved Document L counts it as a renovated thermal element.
Cost
What sits behind the wall decides the plastering cost
We do not charge by the square metre, because the price depends on what is behind the surface. The background. A chalk and flint cottage with old lime plaster, a post-war house with browning on block, and a barn conversion lined with plasterboard on studs each need a different plaster. Lime needs lime to go back over it, which is slower and takes longer to dry.
How much is blown. We tap every wall before quoting, because a hollow patch has already lost its grip. If most of the wall is loose, it is quicker to hack it all off and start again than to patch.
Corners and edges. Window reveals, bay windows, chimney breasts and stairwells take the time, because each needs beads fixed and floated true.
Outside work. External render needs a tower or a scaffold, and on an exposed site like this the weather can stop work for days, since each coat has to cure before the next.
Ask other quotes whether they are skimming over the old surface or taking it back to brick, whether lime is being matched with lime, and how making good round sockets and switches is handled.
If it has come down
A ceiling sagging or plaster falling off
If a ceiling has started to sag, keep everyone out of the room and move out anything you value from under it. A ceiling full of water can come down without warning. If the cause is a leak above, turn off the water if you can.
Plaster that has blown off a wall after a leak is less dangerous, but keep children and pets away from loose pieces. On the first visit we make it safe, take down anything loose and find where the water came from. Scheduled plastering runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For something like this, call rather than filling in the form. If there is no answer, we will phone you back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Outside work gets looked at harder than inside work
Sixpenny Handley sits inside the Cranborne Chase National Landscape, and there are listed cottages in the older part of the village. Neither of those stops you plastering your own front room. What they change is the outside.
Swapping pebbledash for a smooth painted thin coat, or rendering over a wall that has always been bare flint, changes how a building reads from the Sixpenny Handley lane, and in a designated landscape that is the sort of alteration the planning department takes an interest in. Repairing and matching what is on the wall is maintenance. Replacing it with something that looks different is not always.
If the cottage is listed the rule is stricter and it reaches indoors. Listed building consent covers internal fabric as well as elevations, so stripping old lime plaster off a wall, or taking down a lath and plaster ceiling that could be repaired, can need consent even where nobody outside would see it.
Dorset Council holds the record for your address and will tell you what applies before you commit. We quote the repair and the replacement as two separate options so you can see what the careful route costs, and where consent is needed we work to what has been approved.
Who you are dealing with
Plasterers for the village, Deanland and Woodcutts
We plaster in Sixpenny Handley and around it, in Woodcutts, Deanland, Pentridge and the Gussages, 17.1 miles from our base in Boscombe and under Dorset Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, belongs to Thomas Hannen. Before you book a visit in Sixpenny Handley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
He comes to see the walls and ceilings and prices the plastering himself. Checkatrade shows one verified customer's score of 10 out of 10. Seeing the job is free, as is the written quote that lists every item.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Sixpenny Handley?
Most repairs in Sixpenny Handley 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 Sixpenny Handley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Sixpenny Handley. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Sixpenny Handley, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Sixpenny Handley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Cranborne Chase & West Wiltshire Downs National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Sixpenny Handley
Sixpenny Handley is in Cranborne Chase. Does that limit rendering?
Cranborne Chase puts design scrutiny on any rendering you can see from outside. The village sits within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs landscape designation, so Dorset Council looks harder at a change of external finish or colour here than it would on an unprotected street.
There is no conservation area over the village itself, so a like-for-like re-render on an unlisted house is normally maintenance. A different material or a markedly different colour is the part worth asking about first.
Sixpenny Handley has seven listed entries. Could ours be one?
Probably not, but it is worth ten minutes to check. Sixpenny Handley has seven listed entries, the Church of St Mary among them, so the odds are that an ordinary house in the village is unlisted and internal replastering is simply repair. If you are joined to one of the seven, the listing can reach your side of the party wall. I look the entry up before quoting anything that involves taking a surface off.
How do you work out what is behind the wallpaper?
I take a small area off in a corner where it will not be missed. Under the paper there is either a solid backing coat, a soft lime and hair mix, or plasterboard sat on dabs, and each one wants different preparation and comes out at a different figure. That is why the visit happens before the quote rather than after it. Thomas Hannen does that himself, free, and the written quote lists what he found as well as what it comes to.
How much of the house do we need to empty?
The room being worked on, and a clear route through to it. Furniture that cannot leave goes into the middle under sheeting, floors get covered, and doorways get taped off so the mixing dust stays on one side of the house. Radiators come off the wall where plaster runs behind them and go back on afterwards. Being seventeen miles out we set up once and work straight through, so the disruption is concentrated instead of spreading over weeks.
Does an exposed downland site change when you render outside?
It changes the day we pick more than it changes the specification. Up on the Cranborne Chase downs there is little shelter, and wind dries a fresh render coat far faster on the windward face than the sheltered one, which is what leaves shrinkage cracking on a single elevation. We sheet the scaffold to slow it down and work the leeward side while the wind is up. Rain in the first day after a coat is the other one to avoid.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Sixpenny Handley
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Free quote
Find out whether your walls want a skim or a re-plaster
We will tap the room through, look behind anything already loose, and give you a free written itemised price for the work it actually needs.