Plastering and rendering in Wimborne Minster

Lath ceilings and lime plaster in the old town. Getting on for one home in five in Wimborne predates 1919, and the brick houses through the Borough streets and the lanes off the Minster carry lime plaster on solid walls with lath ceilings above. The crack you can see is rarely the story. What decides it is whether the plaster keys that curl over the backs of the laths have snapped off, and we check that from the loft or the room above rather than guessing from underneath. Keys gone, the ceiling comes down. Keys holding, scrim, a patch and a skim will see you out.

Plenty of the older rooms here still have a run of cornice worth keeping. It gets protected before anything comes off the ceiling, cleaned back where a century of paint has filled the detail, and any missing length is run or cast to match rather than replaced with the nearest thing off a shelf. If a room has lost its cornice altogether we will say honestly what can be matched and what cannot.

Flats, conversions and rooms above shops. A third of the homes in Wimborne are flats or maisonettes, a good many of them carved out of older houses and the buildings over the shops. Behind those partitions you find timber studwork, old lath and later board all in the same wall, so the joints between them are where cracks appear. New board is cut in square, mesh goes over every junction between two different backgrounds, then tape and joint or a full skim. Stairs and access get planned at the site visit, because full sheets of board do not go round every turn. The outside of a flat usually belongs to the freeholder rather than to you, so it is worth knowing which of the two you are ringing about.

Where plaster has parted from the brick or block behind it, the loose work comes off back to a clean background and a backing coat goes on before any finish. On a solid old wall that means lime, because the wall has to stay breathable and a hard gypsum finish over one still carrying water simply blows again. On a dry modern background it is browning where it keys, bonding on dense block or a painted face, hardwall where you want it harder. A floated wall holds real water and keeps a room out of use far longer than a skim.

Outside it is painted render over soft old brick in the town, pebbledash on the post-war housing and thin coat systems on the newer work. A blown patch is cut out square, a render coat brought back level and the texture matched so the repair does not read as one. A full elevation goes back as a scratch coat and a basecoat with mesh bedded through it, a primer, then a silicone thin coat, a monocouche or a K render topcoat, off a bell cast bead at the base. On an old town house, lime render rather than sand and cement, every time.

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 brick moves the price further than the size of the room does. A Georgian town house in the Borough with nowhere to park, a first floor flat over a shop reached by a stair that will not take full sheets of board, and a modern semi with a drive are three different jobs. Anything above a porch wants a scaffold on its own line, because work at height rules decide the platform rather than the budget.

We cover Wimborne Minster, Colehill, Pamphill and Merley, out to Corfe Mullen, Furzehill and the BH21 villages, 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.