Plastering in Winfrith Newburgh
Plaster inside and render outside, across Winfrith Newburgh and the DT2 villages. We sound the wall before we price it, and the quote comes in writing.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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If the plaster is bulging or crumbling along the bottom of a wall in an older Winfrith Newburgh house, the wall itself is usually sound and the material stuck to it is wrong. The blown patch comes off, a backing coat goes on that lets the wall dry outwards again, and it gets skimmed once it is ready.
Walls and ceilings in Winfrith Newburgh fail low down on the walls, overhead between the joists, and after water has been in. Plaster that sounds hollow under a knuckle for the first foot or two off the floor and rings solid above it. A ceiling that has cracked, dropped between the joists and started shedding dust on the carpet. Or a room that has been wet, from a burst pipe, a failed gutter or water off the meadow, and has dried out looking worse than it did on the day.
We come and sound every wall and ceiling in the room, not only the one you rang about, and tell you which of the three you have. In this part of the Frome valley what is behind the surface is as often cob or flint rubble as it is brick, and that, more than preference, decides what we put back.
The work
The hollow stops about waist height
Blown plaster on a solid wall. Tap along a wall in one of the older cottages in Winfrith Newburgh and you will usually find the hollow stops about waist height. A solid wall of cob, flint or soft brick has no cavity behind it and no damp proof course under it, and gets rid of ground water through its own face.
The River Win runs within a few feet of Winfrith Newburgh and the low ground sits in flood zone 3, which is why the bottom of a wall here stays wet longer than people expect. Gypsum hardwall and a vinyl paint over it will be blown again inside two winters. We hack off only what has let go, brush the background back, then work in a haired lime backing coat and a breathable finish.
Lath and plaster ceilings. Above you in the old cottages of Winfrith Newburgh is riven lath with the plaster squeezed through the gaps, and it is the nails and the key on the back of the lath that fail rather than the plaster you can see. That is the sag you notice from the doorway. If a third or more of the key has gone we take it down, board it and skim, a day for an ordinary bedroom. If it is sound and only tired we will say so and skim over it instead.
The houses built along the lane in the second half of the last century are ordinary gypsum on block, and want a skim rather than a strip, with dust sheets down and the background prepared, PVA where it is dusty. Where one has blown, the backing coat is floated to a rule, browning where the block pulls and bonding on a dense face. Textured artex ceilings from the same era take a skim once cleaned and stabilised, and we never sand or scrape one, because a coating of that age can contain asbestos. The barn and cart shed conversions round the edge of Winfrith Newburgh go on dot and dab where the blockwork is flat and dry, stud where it is not, then tape and joint or a full skim, with stop bead at each reveal, because deep reveals in a thick wall are where a poor job shows first.
An old wall here was rendered in lime, in a scratch coat, a render coat and a thin finish, and the sand and cement somebody put over the top of it in the seventies is what has cracked off in sheets and taken the face of the wall with it. We take that back and rebuild it breathable. On modern blockwork it is a primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat, off a bell cast bead well clear of the damp course. The exposed elevation faces south west and the sea is under three miles off, so that wall takes the driven rain. For the outside walls, see rendering in Winfrith Newburgh.
How it runs
Lime plaster and board work in village houses
Thomas comes out and taps every wall and ceiling to find sound plaster and hollow patches. You get a written price that separates dust sheets and protection, hacking off, any boarding, the backing coat, beads, the finish and the rubble. One company sees it through.
An older house in Winfrith Newburgh may have lime plaster on stone, flint or cob, or lath and plaster ceilings. Those are repaired in lime so the wall can still dry out, because gypsum on a damp solid wall fails. A later house is usually plasterboard and skim. Floors are sheeted, rooms are sealed against dust, and bags of rubble leave each day. A ceiling that proves worse once opened is photographed and priced for you before any more comes down.
Plaster inside is repair. Winfrith House and the church of St Christopher are both listed, along with many others in Winfrith Newburgh, and on a listed building listed building consent can cover internal plaster as well as the outside. Ask Dorset Council about a conservation area if render is going onto bare stone. Re-render most of an elevation and Approved Document L brings building control in.
Cost
What decides the price of plastering here
No useful rate per square metre. The area is easy to measure and tells you little. Skim or hack off. Every surface is tapped. Sound plaster gets a skim. Hollow or blown plaster comes off back to the wall and is rebuilt with a backing coat and finish. That split moves the price most.
What the wall is. A cob wall under old lime, a flint and brick wall someone skimmed in gypsum, and a post-war house with sound plaster on block are three different prices. Lime goes on in thinner coats, each left to cure, so it takes longer.
Why it failed. Damp from a leak, a high outside ground level or failed render must be fixed first, or the new plaster fails too.
Access and parking. A cottage on the street with nowhere to park, a farm building down a track and a bungalow with a drive all differ. Outside, a tower does low work and a gable needs a scaffold, under HSE guidance on work at height.
Travel. The run out from Boscombe is shown as its own line.
Ask any other quote what backing coat is going on, whether it is lime or gypsum and why, and who takes the waste.
If it has just gone
A ceiling down or a wall soaked after a leak
Call us, as the form is slower. A ceiling that has cracked and dropped, plaster off a wall after a leak, or render away from a gable usually has more to follow. Turn off any water feeding it, clear the room and keep people out.
On the first visit we take down what is loose, prop anything that could still fall and find the cause, then price the repair. Scheduled plastering is Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm. If something has come down, ring, and if we cannot answer we get back to you as soon as we can.
Worth knowing
Plaster that has been wet, and how long to leave it
The Win runs through the middle of Winfrith Newburgh and the low ground either side of it sits in flood zone 3, which you can check street by street on the government flood risk service. That matters to a plasterer more than it sounds.
Gypsum that has been standing in water does not recover: it goes soft, it holds the damp against the wall behind it, and it comes back as a bloom of white salts through whatever you paint on it.
The tidemark on the wall is not the top of the damage either, because water wicks well above the line it left. So on a wall that has been wet we hack off to a good bit above the highest mark, take the skirtings and the beads off with it, and get air moving through the room before anything else is decided.
Then you wait, and the waiting is the part nobody wants to hear. A thick solid wall gives up its water at roughly an inch a month from each face, so a cottage wall that has been soaked is a season rather than a fortnight, and a modern cavity wall is far quicker. Replaster it too early and the new work blows, which is how a room ends up done twice.
When it is ready, a breathable lime backing coat lets the wall carry on drying through the new surface instead of trapping what is left, and salts come out into a sacrificial coat rather than through your paint. Finish with a thinned mist coat and a breathable mineral paint, not vinyl. We will tell you honestly when the wall is ready, and we would rather come back in the spring than take your money for work that will not last.
Who you are dealing with
The plasterer coming out from Boscombe
We are 19.8 miles away in Boscombe, and we plaster in Winfrith Newburgh and the DT2 villages around it, East Knighton, Chaldon Herring, Owermoigne and Moreton, and east into Wool and Wareham. Dorset Council is the authority.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can look up. Thomas Hannen owns the business, taps out the walls himself and writes the price. A verified customer scored us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. The visit is free, and so is the itemised quote. Before you book a visit in Winfrith Newburgh, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Winfrith Newburgh?
Most repairs in Winfrith Newburgh 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 Winfrith Newburgh |
|---|---|
| Who decides | Dorset Council is the planning authority for Winfrith Newburgh. Dorset Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Winfrith Newburgh Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Winfrith Newburgh. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the Dorset National Landscape (formerly AONB), so anything visible from outside gets more attention. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Winfrith Newburgh
The Win runs past the garden. Does that affect the walls?
The Win puts the bottom of a wall at risk, not the top. The watercourse here runs within a metre or so of property, and the village falls in flood zones 2 and 3, so ground water sits high after any wet spell.
That shows up as blown plaster through the first half metre of a wall, salt crystals on the surface and paint lifting off. The wall has to dry and the source has to be dealt with before a new coat.
Can we put a coloured render on a house in the village?
Not without asking first: Winfrith Newburgh has its own conservation area, so how a building reads from the road is controlled, and colour is part of that. Recoating in the finish already there counts as repair. Going from bare stone or a limewash to a modern coloured system is a change of appearance and Dorset Council will want an application. We can price the like for like repair and the alternative so you can choose.
Winfrith House and the church are listed. Are cottages too?
Many are. There are 58 listed entries in this parish, which for a village of this size means a high proportion of the older buildings carry consent requirements. Listing reaches the interior, so a lath ceiling, a plaster cornice or an original lime wall inside a listed cottage cannot just be pulled out. It is a five minute check against the national list, and it decides whether the job is lime repair or ordinary replastering.
Which wall gives the most trouble on an exposed cottage?
The south west one: that is the exposed face here, four and a half kilometres in from the coast, so it takes the wind driven rain while the other elevations stay comparatively dry. Damage starts at the edges, not in the middle, so window reveals, sills, the verge and the base of the wall break down while the main panel still looks sound. That elevation often gets priced on its own instead of all four.
How long does a wall have to dry before plastering?
Long enough to read dry through its depth, not merely at the face. On a solid wall that has been wet, that is usually months with heat and moving air, and a meter reading through the thickness settles it rather than how it looks. Given how high the water sits here after a wet winter, we would rather come back later than lay a coat that blows in six months. Dehumidifiers help; sealing the wall does not.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Winfrith Newburgh
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Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We will come out, sound the walls, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge, and no obligation.