Plastering in Verwood

Ceilings, and a lot of them. With better than four homes in ten here being bungalows, ceilings matter more here than anywhere.

They are plasterboard fixed to the joists or to the underside of a trussed roof, and the usual faults are cracking along the board joints, screw and nail heads popping through the finish, brown staining where something has leaked, and a slow sag between fixings. Where the board is sound the answer is to re-tape, refix and skim. Where it has been wet or the fixings have gone, overboarding on the existing joists is quicker and cleaner than taking a ceiling down over your furniture.

Dab-lined walls on the eighties estates. Over half the housing in Verwood was built from the mid-eighties onwards, which is the point at which walls in this town stopped being floated in wet plaster and started being dry lining: board fixed to the blockwork on dabs or screwed to a stud, joints taped, then a skim or a tape and joint finish. Those walls drum right across when you tap them and that is how they were built. A repair means cutting back to a sound edge or a stud, fitting a new piece the same thickness, taping the joint and skimming out wide. Hacking at one the way you would at a floated wall only makes the hole bigger.

A third of Verwood is older than that, from between the war and the early eighties, floated and set onto a block inner leaf. That plaster is usually still gripping and only the surface has gone, so it takes two passes of finish coat rather than a strip out. Dust sheets go down first, the background is prepared and PVA goes on where it is dusty. A hollow patch with a definite edge is different, and that part comes off back to the block for a backing coat: bonding on a dense or painted face with no suction, browning or hardwall where the block will pull water out of the mix.

A lot of the bungalows in Verwood have had the loft turned into a bedroom, which is its own kind of plastering: board fixed to the rafters and to studwork, sloping ceilings meeting flat ones, a dormer cheek to line, an angle bead on every external corner and a stop bead at each reveal, and long internal angles that have to be scrimmed properly because that is where a room in the roof cracks first. Getting full sheets up a bungalow staircase is half the work, so it is priced as its own item. Outside, the rendered gables and pebbledash are sand and cement of the same age as the estates, and go back as a like-for-like patch, or a strip to the masonry and a scratch coat, a mesh reinforced basecoat, a primer and a silicone thin coat or monocouche topcoat.

Plastering in Verwood is not priced by the square metre. What is behind the surface decides it. Skim or replaster. Sound walls in an eighties house usually just need a skim, and an eighties house with plasterboard walls rarely needs more unless water has got in. Where the backing coat has blown, or dot and dab board has come loose, it has to come off and be redone.

Ceilings. Everything is worked overhead, so ceilings take longer than walls. Artex on an older bungalow ceiling is skimmed over or boarded, and the right answer depends on its condition.

Access. A bungalow with a drive and a garage gives space for the mixer and the boards. A room in the roof of a chalet bungalow means carrying every sheet of plasterboard up a narrow staircase.

Making good. Beads at corners and making good around sockets, switches and frames add time.

Coving and boxing in. Taking down cracked coving and fitting new is a line of its own, as is boxing in pipes. Outside. A low gable comes off a tower. A full elevation needs a scaffold, priced separately.

Ask anyone else quoting whether it is a skim or a full replaster, whether beads and making good are included, and who takes the waste.

We plaster across Verwood, Three Legged Cross, West Moors and the rest of BH31, about ten miles from our Boscombe base. Dorset Council handles planning and building control. The business is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales, number 15471719. Before you book a visit in Verwood, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Thomas Hannen owns it, and he comes to look at your walls and ceilings and prices the work himself. A verified Checkatrade customer marked us 10 out of 10. The visit is free, and the quote, itemised and in writing, costs nothing too.

Most repairs in Verwood 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.