Plastering in West Parley
Whole house skims, dry lining, ceilings, re-plastering and external render across West Parley and BH22. Free site visit, free written itemised quote.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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A wall that sounds hollow in a West Parley house is usually supposed to sound hollow. Many houses of this age are dry lined, so the drum you hear is board and the gap behind it rather than plaster that has failed. Telling those two apart is the difference between a skim and a rip out, and that is what the free visit settles.
West Parley plastering starts from a house changing hands, a cracked ceiling, a hollow wall, a conversion or crazed gable render. A house has just changed hands and every room needs flattening before the carpets go down. A ceiling has cracked along the board joints. A wall has started to sound hollow and somebody has said the word blown. A garage or a conservatory is being turned into a proper room. Or a rendered gable has crazed and greened and nobody can say whether it matters. For the outside walls, see rendering in West Parley.
Almost all of it sits in one cohort. The great bulk of West Parley went up between the war and the early eighties, mostly detached houses and bungalows, and they were built the same way with the same materials, so they wear out in the same way too.
That is useful, because it means we can usually tell you on the phone what we expect to find. It is still a survey before a price: every wall and ceiling in the room gets sounded, and you get an itemised written quote with the method on it as well as the number.
The work
Cheaper to do the lot while the house is empty
Whole house skims after a move. The bigger job on houses here. Textured coatings and artex come off or get overboarded, tired coving comes down, then every wall and ceiling is prepared, primed with thinned PVA or a bonding primer depending on the background, and given two passes of finish coat off the trowel, then a mist coat before you decorate.
Done room by room it is slow. Done in one run with the house empty it is much quicker, and the quote shows that rather than hiding it.
Six in ten homes in West Parley went up between the war and the early eighties, most of them around the turn of the seventies, and the outside walls in many of those houses are dry lined: board on timber battens in the earlier ones, dabs in the later ones. Damaged board is cut out square and replaced rather than filled, and anywhere new board meets old plaster gets mesh across the joint so the crack does not come back through your paint. Not every wall here is board, though. Where a room was plastered straight onto blockwork and it has parted company, the loose work comes off back to a clean background and a backing coat goes on first: bonding on dense block or a painted face that will not suck, browning where the background keys, hardwall where you want a harder surface.
More than a third of West Parley is bungalows, so ceilings are a large part of it. Cracks along the board joints and popped nail heads are movement, and scrim and a skim sorts them. A ceiling that has begun to sag between the joists is usually thin old board, and overboarding across it and skimming is quicker and less mess than pulling it down. Extensions, garage and conservatory conversions are the same build up each time: board on dabs or on a stud, insulated board where a cold wall comes inside, moisture resistant board behind a shower, then tape and joint or a full skim, with an angle bead on every corner and a stop bead at each reveal. Outside it is gables and porches, mostly sand and cement with some pebbledash, patched in a matching mix or stripped back to a silicone thin coat or monocouche off a bell cast bead.
The older houses near the church and the river. A handful of properties down towards Church Lane and the Stour predate all of the above. Those are solid wall with no cavity, lime plaster inside and sometimes a lath ceiling over the top. They have to stay breathable, so a hard gypsum skim over a wall still carrying water will blow again, and on a lath ceiling we look at the keys from the loft before promising anyone a skim. Ground here drains badly and surface water sits in a downpour, which is what puts damp into the foot of a wall.
How it runs
Re-plastering rooms in a lived-in bungalow
Most West Parley homes are post-war bungalows and houses with plasterboard ceilings and block or brick walls under gypsum or sand and cement. Thomas comes and taps the walls and ceilings to find what is sound and what is hollow. The written quote is itemised: protection, hacking off, new plasterboard where needed, the backing coat, beads, the finish coat or skim, making good, and waste.
One company from start to finish. In a bungalow every room opens off one hall, so we sheet the floor from the front door to the room and seal the doorway with dust sheets. Rubble is bagged and carried out each day, and we sweep and hoover before we go. If we find a rotten lintel, a cracked joist or damp behind the old plaster, you get a photograph and a price before we carry on.
Plastering inside a house needs no permission. Outside, re-rendering most of an elevation counts as renovating a thermal element, so Approved Document L and building control come in. The only conservation area in West Parley is the small one by the old church, and only the four listed entries would need listed building consent before old plaster came off.
Cost
What comes off the wall, and what it takes to get in
We do not price plastering by the square metre. Every wall and ceiling is tapped first, because the split between what can be skimmed and what comes back to the block moves the price more than the size of the room.
What is there now. Textured ceilings from the seventies need boarding or skimming over, and some old textured coatings contain asbestos and must be tested before anyone sands or scrapes them. Walls with blown plaster come back to brick or block, then a backing coat, then the skim.
Working around you. An empty detached house with a drive for the van, a bungalow where the back bedroom is reached through the middle of the house, and a first floor flat at Parley Cross with a shared stair each change how the materials get in. Full sheets of plasterboard have to get up that stair.
Outside work. A tower reaches a porch or a low soffit. Anything above a single storey needs scaffold, and the HSE work at height rules decide that.
With another quote, ask whether the walls are being skimmed or hacked off, whether new plasterboard and beads are included, and who clears the rubble.
If it has come down
A ceiling sagging, or plaster coming off in sheets
A ceiling that sags, cracks along the board joints or pulls away from the joists can come down without much warning, especially if a roof leak has soaked it. Keep people out of the room, and if it is wet, turn off the lights on that circuit.
Plaster falling off a wall in sheets is less dangerous, but the next piece usually follows. Ring rather than use the form. On the first visit we take down what is loose, prop a sagging ceiling if needed, and find out why it failed before pricing the repair. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm; if you phone about something urgent and the call is missed, we ring back as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
A hollow wall here is usually a dry lined wall, not a failed one
Half the arguments we walk into here are about a hollow wall, and most of them do not need to happen. In many houses of this age the outside walls are dry lined: plasterboard held off the blockwork on timber battens in the earlier houses, or on dabs of adhesive in the later ones. That leaves a void behind the board, so the wall drums when you knock it.
It is meant to. Tap along it and a dry lined wall gives you an even, boardy note the whole way across, changing pitch slightly every foot or so where the dabs are. Plaster that has genuinely blown off a solid background sounds dead and dull in patches, gives slightly under your hand, and crumbles at the edges of any crack.
The difference is worth real money. Skimming over a sound dry lined wall is ordinary work and a day a room. Stripping that lining off because somebody called it blown costs you the job, the insulating air gap and the reinstatement, and buys you nothing. First, fixings: a heavy shelf or a wall-hung television needs a fixing long enough to reach the blockwork behind, not a plug in the board.
Second, when a dabbed wall has actually failed there is usually water in it, tracking down inside the void from a window head or a leaking gutter, and the tell is board going soft along the bottom edge with staining that keeps returning. That one does need the board off, the wall dried out and new board back, and no amount of skim will hold it.
Who you are dealing with
Plastering in West Parley, with the owner pricing it
Our base is in Boscombe, about 4.5 miles from West Parley. We plaster across the village, Parley Cross and Dudsbury, and out to Ferndown, Longham and Hampreston on BH22. Dorset Council handles planning and building control for your address.
You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. It is Thomas Hannen's firm; he knocks on the walls and prices the job in person. A verified customer on Checkatrade rated us 10 out of 10. The site visit and the itemised written quote are free of charge. Before you book a visit in West Parley, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in West Parley?
Most repairs in West Parley 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 West Parley |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for West Parley. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: West Parley Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around West Parley. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers West Parley. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in West Parley
Heavy rain floods our drive. Can that damage internal plaster?
Flooding on the drive can damage internal plaster, and West Parley is mapped in the high band for surface water even though it falls outside the river flood zones for the Stour. Water that ponds against a wall gets into the base of the plaster and shows up as a tide mark, blown patches and salting a few weeks later, not on the day.
The fix starts outside, with levels and drainage. Replastering before that is sorted just repeats itself.
Ours is a detached bungalow. Where does plaster usually fail?
At the ceiling perimeter and around the loft hatch. West Parley is 36.4% bungalows and 35.2% detached houses, and in both the ceiling sits under cold loft with an outside wall on every side. The cold strip where ceiling meets external wall is where warm damp air condenses, so that is where the dark patch and the soft plaster turn up. Insulation and ventilation come before any new finish goes on.
Are the walls in these houses solid plaster or board?
Often board. 57.8% of West Parley dates from between 1945 and 1982, peaking in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and many outside walls of that age are dry lined on battens or dabs, with some plastered wet onto block. That matters, because a dry lined wall is repaired back to the board, while a solid wall is cut back to the block and the coat rebuilt. Tapping along it tells us which you have.
You are close by. How do we get someone to look at it?
West Parley is about four and a half miles from where we work, so getting to you is easy. Thomas comes out, looks at the wall or the ceiling and measures up, and the itemised quote goes over in writing afterwards. Both of those are free. Scheduled work runs Mon to Fri, 8am to 6pm. Something urgent? Ring, and if we miss you we call back.
What happens to the plaster where the extension meets the house?
It cracks along the join, and filling alone will not hold it. New brickwork and older structure move at different rates for a year or two, and where a modern extension meets a 1960s West Parley wall the two sides also dry at different speeds. We cut the joint out, fix mesh or a movement bead across it and set over, so the movement is absorbed instead of opening a line through the paint each winter.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near West Parley
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from West Parley, and the other trades we offer in West Parley itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in West Parley
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 Ferndown Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
Free quote
Get a price for plastering in West Parley
Tell us the address and what the wall or ceiling is doing. We come out, sound it and put an itemised price in writing. No charge for either.