Plastering in Spetisbury
Lime plaster and lath ceilings in the old cottages, re-skims and render on the newer houses, across Spetisbury, Charlton Marshall and the DT11 villages.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
In Spetisbury the question is nearly always the same: is the wall wet, or is the plaster simply worn out? Those are two different jobs and only one of them starts with a trowel. We find out which you have before quoting either.
The calls come in three shapes. A patch low down on a wall that darkens every winter and comes back through whatever is painted over it. A ceiling in an older cottage that has begun to bow and shed dust. Or a room that is perfectly dry and just tired, where the paper has come off and taken the face of the plaster with it.
The third one is straightforward and we can price it on the spot. The first two are not, because plaster is the symptom rather than the cause, and putting new plaster over an active problem hides it for one winter. We look at the outside of the wall as well as the inside, and tell you what has to happen first even when that means we come back in a few weeks.
The work
Heavy traffic keeps opening the same hairline cracks
Heavy traffic keeps opening the same hairline cracks. The main road runs through the middle of the village and heavy traffic does old lime plaster no favours. Filler along a hairline crack in a solid wall lasts a season. Where the plaster behind it is sound we bond the crack, scrim it and skim the wall out, so the repair is not a line waiting to reappear.
A fifth of the houses here predate 1919. The old cottages strung along the village are solid walled, some cob, some brick with flint, and they were built to take moisture in and give it back up again. Where somebody has skimmed one in gypsum or rendered it in sand and cement, the water finds another way out and the finish blows in a patch, usually low down. The repair is to take off what has failed, put on a lime backing coat and finish breathable. Their ceilings are thin riven laths with haired lime pushed between them, and when the keys above snap the ceiling starts to belly. A sound one is worth keeping and we overboard and skim over the top. One that moves under your hand comes down instead, and goes back in board, tape and joint and a skim, with the joists checked while everything is open.
Half the village is post-war and seventies stock, and that is a different animal: blockwork with a browning backing coat, plasterboard ceilings and a fair amount of artex, which takes a straight re-skim or overboarding where the coating is staying put. Outside it is lime render on the old walls, and on modern blockwork a scratch coat, a mesh reinforced basecoat, a bell cast bead at the base and a silicone thin coat topcoat. Pebbledash gets patched into where the rest of the elevation is sound and there is no honest case for redoing the lot.
How it runs
From your call to a written price
Same team from the first visit to the last coat, one person to ring, and none of it sub-contracted. The quote is itemised: prep, anything hacked off, the backing coat, the beads, the skim, making good and disposal on separate lines. There is no conservation area over the village itself, but the old cottages along the road need listed building consent, and that consent reaches inside a building as well as outside, so stripping historic lime plaster or a lath ceiling in one of the eighteen listed entries here wants checking with Dorset Council first. Re-rendering a complete elevation is a building control matter, because Approved Document L treats the wall as a renovated thermal element.
Cost
What decides the price of a plastering job
No rate per square metre, because what sits behind the surface decides it. A cob cottage under lime render, a Victorian brick semi with lath ceilings, and a seventies bungalow with hardwall on blockwork are three different jobs. We tap the old surface before quoting, because anything hollow is already blown and a finish coat over that buys a year or two at most. Reveals, chimney breasts and staircases are where the hours go, since each is a bead cut, fixed and floated true. External render wants a tower or a scaffold, and each coat has to take up before the next.
If it has come down
Plaster blown or a ceiling down today
Ring rather than use the form. A ceiling that has started to sag, or plaster blown off a wall after a leak, goes to the front of the queue. Keep out of the room and turn the circuit off at the consumer unit. We are thirteen miles down the valley, and a lath ceiling that has started to move should not wait on a quote.
Worth knowing
Why a wet wall has to dry before it is plastered
About a fifth of the housing here predates 1919, and the village sits low in the Stour valley. Those two things together explain most of the plaster failures we are called to. A solid wall with no cavity has no barrier in it and never had one, so it deals with water by letting it evaporate off the face.
If the ground outside has crept up over the years, if a hard cement render or a hard pointing has sealed the outside, or if a gutter is running down the wall, the water cannot leave that way and comes inland instead. New plaster over that will be back within a couple of winters, whatever it cost.
So the order matters. Clear the outside first: ground levels, rainwater goods, and any hard render or pointing that is trapping moisture. Then let the wall dry, which takes weeks rather than days and longer on a thick wall.
Then plaster it in something that can breathe, a haired lime backing on lath or a lime plaster on the solid wall, with gypsum kept for the partitions and the modern extension where it belongs. We would rather quote in two visits and get that order right than come back to the same patch in two years.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
We cover Spetisbury and the DT11 addresses around it, out through Charlton Marshall, Blandford St Mary, Shapwick, Tarrant Keyneston and Sturminster Marshall, under Dorset Council. 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.
Questions
Spetisbury questions we get asked
Barely any flats in Spetisbury. Does that make things simpler?
Usually, yes. Under two per cent of the housing here is flats, so almost every caller owns the whole building and can instruct the work without a freeholder, a managing agent or a service charge consultation in the way. That means we can start when you say so rather than when a block decides. The other side of it is that the whole outside is yours to look after, including the elevations you never walk past.
Can a lath ceiling be saved, or must it come down?
That depends on whether the nibs have gone. About a fifth of Spetisbury predates 1919, so lath ceilings turn up here often enough, and the plaster is held up only by the lumps that squeezed through between the laths. Where those have crumbled the ceiling sags and there is nothing left to fix to. Where they are intact and only the finish has failed, it can be screwed back through washers and skimmed instead of stripped.
Half of Spetisbury is post-war. Does that change the method?
It splits the work into two kinds. Just over half of Spetisbury went up between 1945 and 1982, the biggest run of it in the late sixties and early seventies, and that stock takes a straightforward bonding coat and multi-finish, or a simple over-board. The older fifth needs lime and takes longer. On a village street the two sit next door to each other, which is why I will not quote from a description over the phone.
We are converting a barn. Is it likely to be listed?
Quite possibly. Spetisbury has 18 listed entries and they take in outbuilding ranges as well as houses, one of them a barn and outbuilding range north east of Tarrant Abbey House. If yours is one of those, or stands in the curtilage of one, the internal plaster is part of what the listing protects and stripping it needs consent. On an unlisted barn the real question is whether the walls are dry enough to take a finish yet.
What should we look at before we ring you?
Push up on the ceiling with the flat of your hand and see whether it moves. On the older Spetisbury properties a ceiling that gives even a millimetre or two is usually a lath ceiling losing its key, and that is a different job from a cracked skim on board. Then photograph any crack against a tape measure. The width tells me far more than the length does, and it often saves a second visit.
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Plastering and rendering near Spetisbury
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Find out whether that wall is wet or just worn out
We will look at both sides of it, tell you what has to be fixed before any plaster goes on, and give you a free written itemised price.