Plastering in Southbourne

Skimming suits walls where the plaster behind is sound: a coat of PVA or bonding primer and a two coat skim gives a smooth finish ready for paint. We cover floors with dust sheets, mask what stays in the room, prepare the walls, and put new angle beads on the corners and stop beads at the edges where the old ones have rusted. A typical room is a day to skim, and a day or two to dry before decorating.

Ceilings. In the Edwardian and inter-war houses of Southbourne the ceilings are usually lime plaster on timber lath, and they fail when the plaster loses its key between the laths. A small area can be screwed back with plaster washers and made good. Where it has blown across the ceiling, we take it down, board it with plasterboard and skim it, or in a period room re-lath and use lime if you want to keep the original feel. Newer blocks and houses have plasterboard ceilings, where cracks follow the board joints and the answer is tape and joint and a skim.

Walls taken back. Blown, hollow or crumbling plaster on a solid wall comes off to the brick. On older walls we put back a breathable lime or a lightweight backing coat such as bonding or hardwall browning, float it flat and finish it, because a gypsum skim over a wall that still holds damp will blow again. Where you want the wall dry lined, plasterboard goes on with dot and dab or on a timber stud, then taped and skimmed.

Making good after other trades. After a rewire, new windows or a kitchen, chases, reveals and patches need filling so they cannot be seen once painted. That is one of the most common small plastering jobs in any house.

Artex and textured ceilings. Many can be skimmed over after a proper key and sealer. Older Artex may contain asbestos, so we have it tested before anything is sanded or scraped.

Outside. We patch sand and cement render, pebbledash and small areas of blown render as part of a plastering job, matching the existing finish. A full re-render, or a new silicone or monocouche system with mesh, basecoat and topcoat, is covered on our page on rendering in Southbourne.

Aftercare. New plaster needs to dry out fully before it is decorated. The first coat of paint should be a mist coat of watered down emulsion; a vinyl paint straight onto new plaster peels.

One person to ring from the first visit to the last. The quote is itemised, not a figure on the back of a card: protection and prep, how many coats, the area of each wall and ceiling, beads and stop ends, and disposal on separate lines, so you can compare it properly against anyone else's.

Nothing is left open or unusable overnight. The site is swept at the end of each day rather than the end of the job, and what comes out leaves with us. If something turns up once we start that nobody could have seen, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.

Plastering inside needs no planning. On a listed building, internal plaster, lath ceilings and cornice are part of the listing and need listed building consent before they are removed, and there are several listed buildings in Southbourne. Building control applies where plasterboard forms part of fire separation between flats, and Approved Document L where a wall is being insulated.

Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that is sagging, cracked in a line or dropping dust is the one thing here that will not wait, and nobody should be under it.

The first visit is about getting what is loose down safely and the room usable, and we quote the making good once we can see how far the failure goes. In a divided Southbourne house, a ceiling coming down in your flat may also be the floor of the flat above, so tell the neighbour and the managing agent as well. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For anything urgent, ring rather than use the form, and if we cannot pick up we ring you back as soon as we can.

Call now: 07435 839745

Most homes in Southbourne are flats, and alongside the purpose built blocks, some are in large Edwardian and 1920s houses that were built as single homes and later divided up.

The ceilings in those Southbourne houses are often still the original lime plaster on timber lath, now more than a century old, with a floor above that has been walked on by several sets of neighbours. Footfall, a leak from a bathroom upstairs, or new pipework run through the floor all loosen the plaster from the laths, and it shows as a crack running in one line, a slight sag, or dust on the floor.

Before a ceiling like that is replaced, check its role and its ownership. First, the ceiling between two flats is often part of the fire and sound separation between them, so its replacement should be done to that standard, with the right board and a sealed perimeter, not simply with whatever is to hand. Second, depending on the lease, the ceiling may be yours, your neighbour's or the freeholder's to repair, and a leak from above may be for the flat it came from to put right. Check the lease or ask the managing agent, and we will write up what the ceiling needs so everybody has the same description.

Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Southbourne, and the other trades we offer in Southbourne itself.

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