Property Maintenance in East Grinstead (RH19)
East Grinstead has old buildings that are still moving. The High Street carries one of the longest runs of timber-framed buildings in the country, and in a building whose frame has shifted for centuries, how the plaster and internal finishes are repaired matters far more than what colour goes on afterwards.
Why a repair keeps reopening
In an old building the internal finish was never meant to be rigid.
Lath and plaster, and lime plaster on masonry, were used because they take small movement without failing and because they let moisture pass through and evaporate. Patch a wall like that with a hard modern gypsum or cement material and you have created a stiff panel inside a flexible building: it cracks around the edge of the repair, it sounds hollow where it has lost its key, and if the wall gets damp the moisture is driven out around it. That is the usual reason a crack keeps returning in the same place after being filled two or three times. Repairing it properly means matching the system rather than the appearance — the same kind of material, keyed the way the original was, finished to sit level with what is around it.
Floors, doors and everything that is no longer square
In a building that has moved, nothing lines up, and a lot of ordinary maintenance is really about accommodating that. Doors bind at one corner and need easing and rehanging rather than planing to fit, which only works until the next season. Skirtings and architraves have to be scribed to a wall that is not straight instead of cut square to it. Floors dip, and a board or a joist end that has gone soft near an external wall needs its cause found before anything is relaid. Old timber takes a great deal of repair before it needs replacing, and splicing in a sound section is almost always better than swapping out a component that has been there for centuries. The carpentry and plastering on work like that is our own team's; decorating is a specialist trade and comes in under us at the end.
The Victorian terraces and the family housing
Away from the old centre the town has Victorian terraces and solid family houses, and the list there is the conventional one: guttering, pointing, external timber, damp diagnosed at the wall rather than at the plaster, and the small jobs that have accumulated over a few years. It is worth saying that these houses do not need the careful approach the old centre does, and pricing them as though they do is as unhelpful as the reverse. None of it is complicated work, but it does need seeing properly before it is priced. We look at the building in front of us, write down what needs doing, and price it item by item so you can work through it at whatever pace suits.
More in East Grinstead
Everything we do in East Grinstead is on the East Grinstead area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the building maintenance page.
Common questions
Q.01The same crack keeps coming back. Why?
Usually because the repair material is harder than what surrounds it, or because whatever is causing the movement has not been dealt with. On an old building a rigid patch in a flexible wall will always crack around its edge.
Q.02Should old lath and plaster be pulled off and replaced with plasterboard?
Not as a default. Where the plaster is sound it is worth keeping and repairing, because it suits how the building behaves. Where it has genuinely failed we will say so, and match the replacement to the wall rather than to convenience.
Q.03My doors stick in summer and are fine in winter. Is anything wrong?
Usually not. Timber and old frames move with the seasons, so the sensible fix is easing and adjusting the hanging rather than taking material off, which leaves you a gap for half the year.
Q.04Do you work on the older buildings near the High Street?
Yes, and carefully. Work near the old centre often carries conservation considerations and needs a like-for-like approach, which we establish before starting. Ring 01883 337 700 for a visit.
Thinking about building maintenance in East Grinstead?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.