Plastering in Wareham

Lath and lime in the old streets. The brick houses along North Street, West Street and South Street carry lime plaster on solid walls with lath ceilings overhead, and about one home in six in the town predates 1919. The crack you can see is rarely the problem.

What matters is whether the plaster keys that curl over the backs of the laths have snapped off, and that is a job for a look from the loft or the floor above. Keys gone, the ceiling comes down and goes back on lime or on board. Keys holding, scrim and a skim will see you out.

Where old plaster has parted company with the brick, it comes off back to a clean background and a backing coat goes on first. On these walls that usually means lime, not gypsum, because a solid wall has to keep breathing, and a hard modern finish over one still carrying water simply blows again. Where the wall is genuinely dry, browning or hardwall and a gypsum finish are honest and cheaper.

Skimming in the post-war and seventies housing. Half the town went up between the war and the early eighties, most of it around the turn of the seventies, and the estates off Sandford Road and Worgret Road are the other half of the town: plasterboard on stud, taped joints, artexed ceilings and, in the newer ones, dabs on the outside walls. Where the background is sound we prepare and prime the surface, thinned PVA or a bonding primer depending what is already on it, and run two passes of finish coat off the trowel. A bedroom is a day.

Close to three in ten homes in Wareham are terraced, and the same three jobs come round: the scar where a chimney breast has been taken out, a party wall dry lined at some point and now hollow in patches, and hallway ceilings that crack because everything upstairs walks over them. Angle bead on every rebuilt corner and stop bead at each reveal, or the new work chips within a year. A fifth of the town is bungalows, which means wide ceilings with nothing but a cold loft above them, and they show every crack.

Outside there are gable ends, porches and the odd wholly rendered house. Older walls here carry sand and cement, often pebbledash; newer work is a thin coat silicone, a monocouche or a K render system. New render goes on as a scratch coat or basecoat with mesh bedded through it, then a primer and the topcoat, with a bell cast bead at the bottom so water drips clear and does not run down into the wall. The exposed elevation faces south west, and a hairline crack in render on that side is not a blemish. It is a door for water. For the outside walls, see rendering in Wareham.

We do not set plastering prices per square metre. The split between what can be skimmed and what has to come off back to the brick moves the price far more than the size of the room.

What the walls are. In the older houses of Wareham the walls are solid brick with lime plaster, and the ceilings are often lath and plaster. Patching those needs lime, applied in coats, and slow drying. Gypsum on a solid wall that needs to breathe holds damp and blows. The houses of the late sixties and early seventies usually have plasterboard ceilings and gypsum walls, and a skim over sound board is quick.

How much is loose. A ceiling that has sagged away from its laths has to come down, and the dust and bagging is a day in itself before any board goes up.

Getting materials in. A Georgian town house on West Street with nowhere to park, a terrace near the quay where the van stops at the corner, and a bungalow with a drive take different amounts of carrying. Anything above a porch wants a scaffold on its own line, because work at height rules decide the platform.

Ask each quote which walls are being hacked off and which skimmed, whether lime or gypsum is going on the solid walls, and how the ceiling will be dealt with.

We plaster in Wareham town, Northport and Stoborough, and out to Sandford, Ridge, Wool and the Purbeck villages on BH20. Dorset Council decides planning and building control questions here, and Wareham is 12.5 miles from our base in Boscombe.

You deal with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with the number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen's business, and Thomas is the one who sounds the walls and prices the job himself. A verified Checkatrade customer scored us 10 out of 10. The site visit and the written quote, itemised, are both free. Before you book a visit in Wareham, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.

Most repairs in Wareham 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.