Plastering in Woodlands
Ceilings, skimming, dry lining and external render across Woodlands and the SO40 lanes. We sound the walls before we price them, 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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On most Woodlands houses the plaster on the walls is sound and only the surface has had it, so the job is a skim, not a strip: covers down, a clean, then two passes of finish coat and a room that is flat and ready to decorate in a day.
Houses along the Woodlands lanes show cracked or sagging ceilings, walls that have lost their face and crazed render outside. A ceiling that has cracked in a straight line across the room, or started to sag and drop grit. Walls that have been papered and painted so many times they have lost any kind of face, usually noticed the week a house changes hands.
And an outside wall where the render has crazed, gone hollow and started letting water behind it. We come out, sound every wall and ceiling in the rooms concerned, not just the one you rang about, get a torch into the loft where there is a hatch, and tell you what you have got. Then you get it in writing, itemised, before anyone touches anything.
The work
Textured ceilings from the seventies never get sanded
Ceilings, and a bungalow has plenty of them. 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 without taking 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 in Woodlands 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 in Woodlands 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, not just 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 in Woodlands 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. For the outside walls, see rendering in Woodlands.
How it runs
Plastering in a Woodlands home, from dust sheets to finish
Thomas comes out, taps the walls and ceilings, checks what the backing is, and prices it himself. Hacking off, boarding and skimming follow under that price.
The written quote separates protection, hacking off, boarding, the backing coat, beads, the finish and disposal. In a sixties bungalow that is usually gypsum on block and plasterboard ceilings. In a pre-war cottage it can be lime on lath, which is repaired in lime rather than patched with gypsum. Floors and furniture are sheeted, rooms are left usable each evening, the debris leaves with us, and if old plaster comes away further than expected, we show you photographs and a price and wait for your say-so.
Plastering inside is your business. Patching render like for like is repair. What changes things here is the outside: this is National Park land, and the permitted development right that lets people elsewhere clad or render a house does not apply on designated land. National Park heritage and conservation guidance covers the ground rules, and the Authority’s map of designations will tell you which designations cover your address.
Cost
What decides the cost of plastering a Forest house
The square metres are the easiest thing to measure and the least useful thing to know. What is behind it. A sixties bungalow with sound gypsum on block may just need a skim. A forest edge cottage with lime on lath needs the lath checked and lime put back. A garage conversion with bare blockwork needs a full backing coat and beads at every corner.
Ceilings. An old ceiling that has sagged is usually overboarded or taken down and replaced with plasterboard, and taking down is messier and takes longer.
Damp. On a low plot near the stream, the bottom of a wall can stay damp. Plastering over it without finding the cause wastes the plaster, so we look first.
Getting there. A bungalow with a drive you can reverse onto is quick to work from. A house down a gravel lane behind a narrow gate means every bag is carried.
How much has to come off. Hacking off is priced by what is found, and old plaster rarely comes away neatly.
Ask any other quote what backing coat is going on and why, whether the beads are included, and who takes the waste.
If it has just gone
A ceiling that has dropped after a leak
A ceiling that has cracked and sagged, plaster that has come off a wall after a leak, or render that has come away from a gable needs attention now. Keep everyone out of the room under a sagging ceiling and turn off the lights on that circuit if water is near them.
Phone us on 07435 839745 rather than sending the form. Missed calls are returned as soon as we can. At the house we make it safe, taking down what is loose and propping or boarding what is left, and the permanent plastering is priced once the cause is fixed. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Worth knowing
One generation of houses, and what it did to the plaster
Nearly half the homes around Woodlands went up between the end of the war and the early eighties, with the biggest block of them in the late fifties and early sixties. That is useful to know before you take a price, because houses of one generation fail in the same way.
The wall plaster on that stock is a thin float and set over brick or dense block and it is usually still perfectly sound, so a full replaster is rarely worth anyone's money.
The ceilings are plasterboard nailed to the joists with scrim tape over the joints, which is why the crack you can see runs dead straight across the room and why the nail heads show as a row of small circles. Both come right with a skim. What does not come right with a skim is the dark patch in the corner of a ceiling or the mould down the side of a window reveal, because those are cold surfaces rather than failed plaster.
So the order matters. Houses of that age were built with nothing much in the walls and very little over the wall plate, and the coldest line in the room is where the ceiling meets the outside wall. Skim over that and the mould is back by February. Get the ventilation and the insulation at the eaves sorted first, then plaster, and it stays gone.
If a ceiling is coming down anyway, that is the moment to top up the loft while the joists are open and the access is already paid for, and Approved Document L sets the standard renovated work is expected to reach. We would rather tell you that at the visit than take the money twice.
Who you are dealing with
A plasterer for Woodlands, Copythorne and Lyndhurst
We plaster in Woodlands and the SO40 lanes around it, Netley Marsh, Ashurst, Bartley, Copythorne and Cadnam, and south through Lyndhurst. From our base in Boscombe it is 17.8 miles. Planning applications go to the National Park Authority; building regulations to New Forest District Council.
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719, which you can check online. Thomas Hannen owns the firm and comes out to price your plastering himself. A verified customer rated us 10 out of 10 on Checkatrade. There is nothing to pay for the visit or the quote. Before you book a visit in Woodlands, you can read our customers' Google reviews, word for word, on our reviews page.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Woodlands?
Most repairs in Woodlands 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 Woodlands |
|---|---|
| Who decides | New Forest National Park Authority is the planning authority for Woodlands. New Forest National Park Authority's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Forest North East Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Woodlands. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | Inside the New Forest National Park, where design is looked at more closely and permitted development rights are narrower. |
Questions
Questions about plastering in Woodlands
The National Park is our council. What does it check?
Mostly, the Authority checks appearance. Woodlands falls under the New Forest National Park Authority, not a district council, and it sits inside the Forest North East conservation area, so a change of external finish gets looked at more closely than it would outside the Park. Only two listed entries fall here, so listed building consent is rarely the issue. Repair in the same material is maintenance and does not need an application going in.
What do the 1950s houses around here have on the walls?
Usually a lightweight backing coat on block with a gypsum finish over it, sometimes on a sand and cement scratch coat. The largest single block of housing here went up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, 22.0% of the stock inside that one span, with 46.5% built between 1945 and 1982. Those walls repair well, but the bond low down has often gone. We cut back to what is solid and rebuild in two coats.
The stream is close to the house. Should we worry about damp?
Watch the base of the wall. Woodlands sits in flood zone 2, with a tributary of the Fletchwood running within forty metres of property, so the ground stays wet longer here than the surface would suggest. It shows as blown plaster and salting in the first course or two above floor level. That is not a plastering fault. Sort the ground and the wall, then replaster, or the same patch comes back.
Can you get a van and materials down to the house?
Usually yes. Woodlands is largely detached houses and bungalows, 41.5% of it detached, so most properties have their own drive with somewhere to stand a van and a mixer off the road. That keeps bagged waste off the verge and out of the lane. Where a property sits down a shared track we look at the access on the visit and work out where boards and waste can go before quoting.
Should the loft be done while the ceiling is open?
If the ceiling is coming down anyway, that is the moment for it. With joists exposed you can lay or top up insulation across the whole span, seal the gaps at the wall plate and run any cable work without cutting new board about later. On a bungalow, which nearly a third of the housing here is, that ceiling is the entire thermal boundary of the property, so it is worth doing once rather than twice.
Nearby, and next door
Plastering near Woodlands
Nearby places we also cover for plastering, with straight-line distances from Woodlands, and the other trades we offer in Woodlands itself.
Plastering nearby
Our other trades in Woodlands
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 Lymington Plastering, all areas Every area we cover
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Get a price for plastering in Woodlands
Tell us the address and what you have noticed. We will come out, sound the walls and ceilings, and put an itemised price in writing. No charge, and no obligation.