Plastering in Stone
Ceilings, re-skims, dry lining and render for houses, cottages and flats around Stone, Pamphill and the BH21 lanes west of Wimborne.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
Last updated
Plastering work around Stone turns on whether the surface is sound enough to skim and whether it is lime or gypsum underneath. In a cottage on the Pamphill lanes the second decides everything, so we ask the age of the house on the phone, before anyone reaches the doorstep.
The plastering jobs in Stone are ordinary enough. A ceiling stained and sagging after water came through from above. A wall that sounds hollow when you knock it and has everyone worried. A room stripped for decorating where the plaster has come away with the paper. An extension or a converted outbuilding that needs boarding and skimming before anyone can paint it.
What changes in Stone is who owns the surface in front of you. Between the old brick cottages along the Pamphill lanes and the later houses towards Wimborne, the work can be for a homeowner, a landlord or a managing agent, and the written quote has to suit whichever of those is paying. Nine miles from us, so looking costs nothing.
The work
Re-skimming a stairwell that has to stay open
Ceilings after a leak from above. Where a bathroom has been fitted upstairs in an old cottage, this is the ceiling fault to expect. A washing machine, a shower tray or a failed seal upstairs, and the ceiling below goes brown, then soft, then starts to drop.
We take out what is wet rather than skimming over a stain, let it dry, then patch in board, scrim the joints and skim the whole ceiling so the repair does not read as a square through the emulsion.
Hollow walls that are not actually blown. The newer houses around Stone are often dry lined: plasterboard stuck to the blockwork on dabs of adhesive, then a skim or a taped joint. A wall like that sounds hollow because it is hollow, by design. Knowing the difference between a dabbed wall doing its job and a backing coat that has let go of the brick is most of what a proper look is for, and it decides whether you need a skim or a strip out. Where wet plaster goes back it is browning or hardwall where the block pulls, bonding on a dense face.
Re-skimming a stairwell in a lived-in cottage in Stone is a different job from a front room: the stairs have to stay usable, the dust has to stay inside the sheeting, and the work has to be planned around the household. We work in sections and leave the route in and out usable at the end of every day. Dust sheets go down first and the background is prepared, with PVA where it is dusty.
Much of the parish predates 1919 and a great many of its buildings are listed, most of them the old brick cottages along the lanes: solid walls with lime plaster on them and lath ceilings above. Those want a lime backing coat and a breathable finish rather than gypsum, and a lath ceiling that is only cracked is usually worth overboarding and skimming rather than pulling down.
New work is boarded on studs or on dabs, taped and jointed or fully skimmed, with an angle bead on every corner and a stop bead at every reveal. Where a new opening meets old plaster, the join is floated out wide rather than filled tight, which is what stops a line appearing there next summer. Outside, render is patched into sound work where that is honest, or taken back to a scratch coat, a render coat, a mesh reinforced basecoat, a bell cast bead and a silicone thin coat topcoat. The old sand and cement and pebbledash come off harder than people expect. Thin coat systems suit modern blockwork; on old solid brick it is lime render instead. For the outside walls, see rendering in Stone.
How it runs
Plastering in a house or flat, from sheets to skim
Thomas comes out and taps the walls and ceilings to find hollow areas, and checks what is behind them. In Stone that might be an eighties house with plasterboard on dabs, a bedroom ceiling that has been rained on from the bathroom above, or an older cottage with lime plaster on solid walls and lath ceilings.
You get an itemised quote: protection, anything hacked off, the backing coat, beads, the skim, making good and disposal. You deal with one company from sheeting the floors to the final coat. In a cottage we protect the stairs and every floor we cross, carry waste out by hand, and keep noisy work to working hours. Rooms are swept each evening and old plaster leaves with us. Damp, a cracked lintel or buried wiring found behind the old surface is shown to you in a photo with a price before anything more is done.
Plastering inside needs no planning permission. On a listed building, consent covers internal fabric as well as the outside, so a lime plastered wall or a lath ceiling in an older cottage needs a call to Dorset Council about listed building consent before anything comes off. Re-rendering a whole elevation brings Approved Document L and building control in.
Cost
Lath, board or lime, and the stairs to carry it up
What is behind the surface. Plasterboard on dabs, gypsum browning on block, and lime on solid brick each need different preparation. Tapping finds what is hollow, and that has to come off before anything goes on.
Water damage from above. A ceiling brought down by a leak may need the roof, a tank or a bathroom seal put right first, depending on where the water came from. The cause has to be fixed first, or the new ceiling goes the same way.
Old lime and lath. In the older cottages, patching lime plaster with gypsum causes damp and cracking at the join. Lime is slower and needs more coats, so the programme is longer.
Detail. Reveals, chimney breasts and stairwells each need beads cut, fixed and floated true, and that is where the hours go.
Getting in and out. In a cottage with a narrow stair and low doorways, protecting the route and carrying waste out by hand is real time. Outside, a tower does for low work and a gable needs a scaffold.
Ask any other plasterer whether the old plaster is being hacked off or skimmed over, what backing coat is used, and whether beads and making good are included.
If it has come down
A ceiling sagging after a leak from upstairs
A ceiling that has started to sag, or plaster blown off a wall after a leak, can come down without warning. Keep out of the room and switch off the circuit at the consumer unit if water is near a light.
If you rent, ring us anyway and tell your landlord too, because the repair may be theirs to instruct. Use the phone, not the form. We take down what is loose on the first visit, support what is left and find where the water came from. Plastering is booked Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. For something urgent, call, and if we miss it we ring back once we can.
Worth knowing
In a flat, the first call may not be a plasterer
If you are in a leasehold flat nearer Wimborne, that changes who can order the work. Inside a leasehold flat the decorative surfaces are usually yours. The structure, the external walls and everything in the common parts normally belong to the freeholder and are paid for out of the service charge.
So a ceiling brought down by a leak from the flat above is often not your repair to instruct at all, and ringing a plasterer first can leave you paying for something the building was going to pay for. Check your lease, then speak to the managing agent, then ring us.
Where the freeholder is paying it goes slower and the paperwork matters. Section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 means a landlord has to consult leaseholders before major works where any one leaseholder would be charged more than £250, so the quote has to be itemised clearly enough to be circulated and compared.
That is how we write them anyway. We are happy to price the inside of your flat and the communal side as two separate documents, so nobody spends three months arguing about which half of a ceiling belongs to whom.
Who you are dealing with
Who plasters it, and how to check the company
We cover Stone, Pamphill and the BH21 addresses around them, out through Cowgrove, Wimborne Minster, Colehill and Corfe Mullen. Stone is some nine miles from our base in Boscombe and falls under Dorset Council. Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is the company, registered in England and Wales under 15471719. Before you book a visit in Stone, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Its owner, Thomas Hannen, looks at the walls and ceilings himself and prices the work. Checkatrade shows a verified customer's 10 out of 10. There is no charge for the visit or the itemised quote.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Stone?
Most repairs in Stone 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 Stone |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Stone. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | None covers Stone, so a like-for-like repair is ordinary maintenance. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Stone. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Stone. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Stone
We are in a flat near Wimborne. Can a leaseholder just book us?
Often not for anything outside the flat itself. In a flat or maisonette the external walls and the structure stay with the freeholder and are managed through the service charge, so the person living there cannot instruct external render or a structural ceiling repair on their own. Inside your own demise a re-skim is normally yours to arrange. I put the quote in whichever name the lease requires.
What do we send the managing agent to get this approved?
A written itemised quote with the surfaces broken out line by line, which is what an agent needs to compare it and sign it off. Thomas Hannen measures and writes it himself and there is no charge for the visit or for the quote. If any of the work touches the shared parts of the building, say so on the visit and those lines can be listed apart from your own.
Pamphill has a lot of listed buildings. Does ours count?
Worth checking before anything comes off a wall. The parish carries a great many listed entries, the Chapel of St Margaret and St Anthony and Pamphill Farm House among them. On a listed interior the historic plaster is part of what is protected, so taking a ceiling back to the lath is a consent matter, not a decision made on the day.
Our eighties house has hollow walls. Was it built wrong?
It was built that way on purpose. By the 1980s plasterboard was being stuck to blockwork on dabs rather than floated on wet, so there is an air gap behind most of the board and the whole wall drums when you tap it. It only matters where the board has come away from the dabs, and that shows as movement under hand pressure, not as sound alone.
How do you get boards up a narrow cottage stair?
By hand, in smaller sheets. A full size plasterboard will not turn on the stairs of most older cottages, and around Stone that is a normal day, not an awkward one. We cut down to a size that will turn and accept the extra joints, which get taped and filled in any case, then protect the stairs and clear them the same evening.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Stone
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Stone, and the other trades we offer in Stone itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Stone
Plastering and rendering guides
Silicone, cement or lime: which render? Cracked render: which cracks matter Hollow-sounding wall: blown plaster or dot and dabEverything we do in Corfe Mullen Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get the ceiling or the wall priced properly in writing
We will look at it, tell you whether it is a skim or a strip out, and give you a free itemised written quote a managing agent or an insurer can work from.