Plastering and rendering in West Moors

Ceilings, which is most of what we do here. Half the homes in West Moors are bungalows, so the ceiling is as wide as the floor with nothing but a cold loft over it. Cracks along the board joints and popped nail heads are movement rather than failure, and scrim and a skim sorts them. A ceiling that has begun to belly between the joists is usually thin old board rather than a leak, and the quicker fix is to overboard across it and skim that, which leaves the loft undisturbed. One that has genuinely dropped away comes down instead. There is a great deal of artex above head height in this village: sound texture gets knocked back, prepared and skimmed over, heavy or loose texture is flatter overboarded, and nothing from before the 2000s gets sanded, because it can contain asbestos and wants sampling first.

Nearly two thirds of the village went up between the war and the early eighties, peaking around the turn of the seventies. In those bungalows the outside walls are usually plaster on blockwork and the partitions are board on stud. Where the background is sound we prepare and prime it and run two passes of finish coat off the trowel. Where a wall sounds hollow it has parted from the block, so that piece comes off and a backing coat goes on first: bonding on a dense or painted face, browning where the background keys, hardwall where you want it harder.

Opening a bungalow up. Knocking two rooms into one leaves a scar across the ceiling and a pair of raw returns, and that is a proper making good job rather than a patch: mesh over the joint between two different backgrounds, beads on the new corners, then the whole ceiling skimmed so the join does not show up the first time low winter sun comes through the window. In a chalet bungalow the sloping ceilings and dormer cheeks are the fiddly part, and every one of those angles wants a bead run true or the finished room reads crooked from the doorway.

Plenty of rendered and pebbledashed elevations here, mostly sand and cement of the same age as the houses. A full elevation goes back as a scratch coat and a basecoat with mesh through it, a primer and then a silicone thin coat, monocouche or K render topcoat, off a bell cast bead at the base. Low eaves are the one real bargain in a bungalow: much of this comes off a tower rather than a scaffold.

No rate per square metre. Every wall and ceiling is sounded with a knuckle first, because the split between what is skimmed and what comes off back to the block moves the price further than the size of the room does. A bungalow with a drive and garage, a chalet bungalow with a loft room up a stair that full sheets of board will not go up, and an occupied house where the only bathroom is off the room being plastered are three different jobs. Above a low gable, scaffold is its own line, because work at height rules decide the platform rather than the budget.

We cover West Moors and the BH22 villages, out to Ferndown, Three Legged Cross, St Leonards and Verwood, and Dorset Council is the planning and building control authority for this address. 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 site visit and the written itemised quote are both free.