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DSL Plastering

Rendering that earns its keep.

Render is the coat your house wears through every Welsh winter. It keeps weather out of the wall and changes the look of the whole property, and which one is right depends on how that wall is built.

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A DSL Plastering renderer applying a scratch coat of sand and cement render to a blockwork wall

Choosing a finish

Four systems, and the walls they suit.

There is no best render, only the right one for your wall. Putting a sealed cement coat on a solid wall that needs to breathe is the most expensive mistake on this page, and it is a common one.

Silicone thin coat
Flexible, breathable and colour-stable. It copes with slight movement without cracking and stays clean longer than most. The usual choice on modern walls and insulated systems.
Monocouche
Through-coloured, so the colour runs the full depth rather than sitting on the surface. Applied in one pass and never needs painting. Hard-wearing and low maintenance.
Sand and cement
The traditional finish, hard and durable, painted once cured. Still the right answer on plenty of walls, and the most economical of the three.
Lime render
For solid-walled and older property that has to breathe. Softer and slower to apply, but the only sensible option where cement would trap moisture in the wall.

On a period or listed property, lime is almost always the answer. That work has its own page: heritage and lime work.

A DSL Plastering renderer working a fresh coat into a house wall, windows masked off and the render pump running below
  • Silicone thin-coat render
  • Monocouche through-coloured render
  • Traditional sand and cement
  • Lime render on older, solid-wall property
  • Pebble dashing
  • Insulated render systems

How a render job runs

The coat you never see is the one that matters.

Almost every failed render on a Monmouthshire house failed underneath, in the preparation and the basecoat, long before anyone noticed a crack in the finish.

Every job is quoted with the preparation written into it, so you can see what you are paying for rather than taking the cheapest number and hoping the wall was ready.

  1. 01

    Look at the wall first

    We tap the existing render through, check what the wall is built of, and look at where water is getting to it. What is behind the render decides which system goes on the front of it.

  2. 02

    Strip, prepare and protect

    Failed render comes off, the substrate is made good, and beads go on to give clean arrises and a straight line at the base. Windows, doors, drives and planting get masked and sheeted before anything is mixed.

  3. 03

    Basecoat and reinforce

    The basecoat goes on and the mesh is bedded into it, which is what stops movement in the wall turning into cracks across your new finish. This is the coat nobody sees and every failure starts in.

  4. 04

    Finish, and clear the site

    The top coat is applied and textured, beads and details are cut in, and the scaffold and masking come off. The job is not done until the ground around your house looks like we were never on it.

Also covered

Dash, insulation and repairs.

Not every render job is a whole house in a new finish. Plenty of what we do is putting right one elevation, matching what is already there, or making a cold wall warmer while we are on it.

Pebble dashing
Still on a great many houses around here, and still worth repairing rather than replacing when the bulk of it is sound. We patch and match it, or take it off and put a modern finish on if that is what you would rather have.
Insulated render systems
Insulation board fixed to the outside of the wall and rendered over, so a cold solid-walled house gets warmer without losing a single inch of room inside. It changes reveals, sills and rainwater goods, so it wants planning properly rather than deciding on site.
Patch repairs
A blown patch under a leaking gutter does not always mean the whole elevation comes off. If a repair is the honest answer, that is what we will quote, and we will tell you what caused it so it does not simply happen again.

Common questions

What people ask about render.

We cover Monmouth, Abergavenny, Chepstow, Usk, Raglan and everywhere between.

Which render should I choose?
Silicone thin-coat is flexible, breathable and holds its colour, so it suits most modern walls. Monocouche is through-coloured and needs no painting. Sand and cement is the traditional, hard-wearing option. On an older solid-walled property the answer is usually lime, because cement traps moisture in a wall that needs to breathe.
Can you render over the render that is already there?
Sometimes, if the existing coat is sound, well stuck and not trapping moisture. More often it is hollow in places, and rendering over a failing coat just buys you a couple of years. We tap the wall through before quoting and tell you which of the two you are looking at rather than guessing from the pavement.
How do I know my render needs replacing?
Cracks that run rather than hairline crazing, patches that sound hollow when tapped, render lifting away at the base of the wall, and damp showing on the inside face of an outside wall. Blown render lets water behind it and then holds it there, so it tends to get worse quickly once it starts.
What time of year can rendering be done?
Most of the year, but not in frost and not in fierce direct sun, because both ruin the cure. Wet spells slow us down rather than stop us. Lime work is the fussiest and is best programmed well away from winter. We will be straight with you about weather rather than starting a wall we cannot finish.
Will I need scaffolding?
For anything above single storey, yes, and it is the safe and the faster way to work. We will include it in the written quote so the figure you get is the figure you pay, rather than finding it added on later.

Get a price for your rendering.

Tell us roughly how many elevations, how many storeys and what is on there now. A photo of the wall helps. We will come and look, then give you a fixed price in writing.

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