Plastering at Thorney Hill

If a wall answers dead, leave it alone. Four homes in ten here went up between the war and the early eighties, nearly all of them built the same way: a block inner leaf, a float coat straightened onto it, a gypsum finish over that.

Fifty years later the plaster is usually still stuck fast and what has failed is the surface, buried under textured paper, gloss and roller marks. Dust sheets go down and the surface is prepared and sealed with PVA where it is dusty, then those walls take two passes of finish coat, trowelled flat, one room at a time so you can carry on living in the rest of the house, with a mist coat over the new work before you paint. If a wall answers dead when we knock it, we will tell you to leave it alone, and we will not sell you a strip out. Where one has let go it comes off to the block for a backing coat first, browning or hardwall where the block pulls, bonding on a dense painted face.

A fifth of the homes in Thorney Hill are bungalows, so their ceilings sit straight under a cold loft, with no heated bedroom above. That is where sagging board, stained joints and cracks along the plasterboard edges show first, and it is why a ceiling here often needs the loft looked at before the trowel comes out. Most of the time overboarding and skimming beats pulling the old ceiling down, and lightly patterned artex can be sealed and skimmed flat, though anything from before the mid-1980s gets tested before it is scraped or sanded.

Roughly a fifth of the housing predates 1919, which means solid walls, lime plaster and often a lath ceiling. Those walls get rid of water through their own face, so a cement backing coat or a gypsum skim over one traps it and the finish blows again within a couple of winters. We keep the whole build-up breathable, patch in lime where lime is what is there. Later houses, extensions and loft rooms are plasterboard instead: on dot and dab or screwed to a stud, then tape and joint or a skim, with repairs skimmed wide enough that low winter light never picks the patch out.

Render on the weather side. Out here the wind and rain come off the open ground from the southwest, so one side of the house takes far more water than the rest and that is the side where a rigid sand and cement render crazes, drums and lets water sit behind it. Where it has gone, the honest choice is a like-for-like patch or a strip back to the masonry and a proper system: a scratch coat, a mesh reinforced basecoat, a primer and a silicone thin coat topcoat. Pebbledash comes off harder than anyone expects, so it is its own line on the quote, and a bell cast bead at the base throws water clear of the wall below. For the outside walls, see rendering in Thorney Hill.

Two rooms of equal size can take very different time, depending on what the old plaster is stuck to. Skim or start again. A sound wall only wants a skim. One where the backing coat has blown is hacked off and floated first, and that takes far longer.

Ceilings. Ceilings in houses of this era are plasterboard that often just wants the joints taped and a skim. Where there is Artex, it is skimmed over or boarded rather than scraped, because older textured coatings can contain asbestos and are tested first.

Corners and reveals. A room with coving, deep reveals and a chimney breast has far more corners to bead than a plain box.

Access and parking. Around Thorney Hill that is usually a bungalow with everything on one level and room on the drive for a mixer, or a detached house behind a hedge where the van stands on the verge. Outside, a tower or a scaffold is a priced line under the work at height rules.

Check with anyone else quoting that blown patches will be cut out and not just skimmed, that Artex will be tested, and that beads and making good are priced in.

From our base in Boscombe, Thorney Hill is 6.8 miles, out past Christchurch. We plaster homes there and in Bransgore and Burley. Plastering inside rarely involves any authority, but an outside finish is the National Park Authority's concern, and building regulations sit with New Forest District Council.

Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. The man who taps the walls and prices the job is Thomas Hannen, the owner. Checkatrade has a verified customer's 10 out of 10 for us. The visit and itemised quote are free. Before you book a visit in Thorney Hill, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Thorney Hill 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.