Plastering in Woodlands

Ceilings, which is most of what we do here. A third of the homes along these lanes are bungalows, and a bungalow has as much ceiling as it has floor, with the loft sitting directly on top of every square metre of it. That works in your favour. When a plasterboard ceiling has cracked along the joints, popped its nails or been artexed and gone tired, we can usually overboard and skim it rather than take it down, and where it does have to come down the access is straightforward and the mess stays in one room. A bedroom ceiling is a day. A big open-plan living room with a chimney breast to cut round is two.

Most of the housing here went up between the war and the early eighties, with the biggest run of it through the late fifties and early sixties, and those walls are gypsum on brick or dense block that is nearly always still sound behind the wallpaper. That means a skim: covers down, floors under dust sheets, a clean, a coat of PVA where the background is dusty, then finish coat in two passes. Textured artex from the seventies goes the same way once it is cleaned and stabilised. We never sand or scrape a textured coating, because anything of that age can contain asbestos and sanding is the one thing that makes it dangerous.

Four in ten homes here are detached and nearly all of them came with a garage, and a good number of those are becoming rooms. Dry lining on dabs where the blockwork is flat and dry, a stud with insulation between where it is not, then tape and joint or a full skim over the board. Angle bead on every external corner, stop bead where the plaster stops at a reveal, and the step down at the old garage threshold made good properly rather than filled.

The older cottages on the forest edge. Getting on for one home in five here predates the First World War: solid walls with no cavity, lath ceilings, and lime plaster that has to let the wall breathe. On those we hack off only what has blown, then put back a haired lime backing coat and a breathable finish rather than gypsum hardwall, which seals a solid wall and is why the same patch comes back. The Fletchwood tributary runs close behind the lane and this is flood zone 2 ground, so the bottom of a solid wall out here dries slowly and is worth checking before anyone promises you a finish.

Outside it is roughcast and pebbledash from the post-war years, cracked and hollow around the openings, plus the odd whole elevation that has gone past patching. We cut back to sound material, mesh reinforce the repair and match the topcoat. On new blockwork it is a primer, a mesh reinforced basecoat and a silicone thin coat of the K render sort, or a through coloured monocouche, off a bell cast bead clear of the damp course. On old fabric it is lime, in a scratch coat, a render coat and a thin finish.

There is no useful rate per square metre: the square metres are the easiest thing to measure and the least useful thing to know. A sixties bungalow with sound gypsum on block, a forest edge cottage with lime on lath, and a garage conversion where the blockwork was never meant to be seen are different prices. Access matters as much: a bungalow with a drive you can back a van onto, a house down a gravel lane behind a gate too narrow for one, and a cottage with the road tight against the front wall. Ask what backing coat is going on and why.

We cover Woodlands and the SO40 lanes around it, Netley Marsh, Ashurst, Bartley, Copythorne and Cadnam, and south through Lyndhurst. 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 visit and the written quote are both free.