Heritage plastering for buildings that need to breathe.
Monmouthshire is full of solid-walled stone and brick property built long before cavities and damp proof courses. Those buildings manage water by letting it evaporate. Work with that and they last. Seal them up and they rot.
Why it matters
The modern material is usually the one that does the damage.
A solid wall has no cavity to stop water crossing it. What it has instead is a surface that lets moisture evaporate away faster than it arrives. Lime plaster and lime render are soft, porous and slightly flexible, so they let that happen and move with the building rather than cracking away from it.
Cement render and gypsum plaster do the opposite. They are hard, brittle and effectively sealed. Water that gets into the wall, and it always does, cannot get back out through the face. So it travels: up the wall, along to the next opening, into the joist ends and the lintels. The damp patch that appears three metres away from the repair is the wall telling you where the moisture went instead.
This is the single most common thing we are called out to put right on period property, and it is almost always well-intentioned work by somebody who used the material they knew.
Plaster failing away from a solid wall. Once the face is sealed, moisture pushes the coat off from behind and takes the decoration with it.
What we take on
Conservation work, at the pace it needs.
None of this is quick. Lime wants time between coats, it dislikes frost and fierce sun, and a moulding that took a craftsman a week in 1840 is not going back up in an afternoon.
- 01
Lime plaster and render
Applied in coats, each given time to carbonate before the next goes on. Soft enough to move with the building and open enough to let it dry out. On a solid wall, this is not a nostalgic choice, it is the functional one.
- 02
Cornice, coving and ceiling roses
Damaged runs repaired in place where we can. Where a length is missing entirely, we take a mould from a surviving section and cast the replacement to match, rather than reaching for the nearest modern profile.
- 03
Listed buildings and conservation
Work that usually needs consent before it starts and a specification agreed with the conservation officer. We are used to that process and to the slower pace it demands.
- 04
Barn conversions
Old agricultural buildings rarely have a damp proof course and almost never have a cavity. Getting the wall build-up right at the outset saves years of chasing damp afterwards.
- Lime plastering to solid walls
- Lime rendering and harling
- Repair and running of cornice and coving
- Ceiling rose and decorative moulding restoration
- Listed building and conservation work
- Barn conversions
Before you commit
Ask any trade what they would use, and why.
On a listed or solid-walled building the specification matters more than the price. If the answer comes back as sand and cement without a question about how the wall is built, keep ringing round.
We are happy to come out, look at what you have, and talk through the options before anybody commits to anything. If the right answer turns out to be a smaller job than you feared, we will tell you that too.
Common questions
Lime, listed buildings and old walls.
Why does an old house need lime rather than gypsum or cement?
Do you work on listed buildings?
Can damaged cornice and ceiling roses be repaired?
Is lime work slower?
Got an old building that needs doing properly?
Tell us roughly what you are dealing with and we will come and look. If it is listed, let us know at what stage the consent is, and we will work to whatever specification has been agreed.