Painters and Decorators in Oxted (RH8)
In Oxted's town-centre terraces and older houses, the wall behind the paint is the real question. Plaster from before 1900 behaves differently from a modern gypsum skim, and knowing what can be saved from what has to come off decides the price and the finish alike.
Sounding the walls before anyone prices them
The quickest useful thing anybody can do in an old room is tap along the walls with a knuckle.
Sound plaster gives a dull, solid note. Plaster that has lost its grip on the backing gives a hollow one, and that is the part which will crack again a few months after it has been filled and painted. A wall with one or two hollow patches is a patching job: cut back to a sound edge, make good, feather the repair out and paint the whole wall. A wall that sounds hollow in half a dozen places is a replastering job, and pretending otherwise is how people end up paying for interior decorating twice over. It takes a few minutes to check, and it is the difference between a price you can rely on and an estimate that moves once work starts.
Lath and plaster ceilings
Ceilings in the older Oxted stock are often lath and plaster: thin timber laths with plaster pushed through the gaps behind them to form a key. Over a hundred-odd years that key breaks up in places, which is why a ceiling can look sound, feel firm from above, and still crack along the same line every couple of years however carefully it is filled. Where the ceiling is largely sound it can be re-fixed and skimmed. Where it is not, overboarding and skimming gives a flat, stable surface that takes paint properly and stays put. Neither is a decorating decision on its own. It is a building one — taken before anybody quotes for painting the room, because the answer changes the whole shape of the job.
The larger houses out towards the Downs
Further from the town the properties get bigger and the work changes character: more rooms, higher ceilings, more exterior painting on render, timber and rainwater goods, and a programme measured in weeks rather than days. On a job that size the value of one firm running it sits mostly in the joins between trades, so each stage arrives when the surface is genuinely ready for it rather than when the diary says so. Being a short run along the A25 from Godstone also means coming back to look at something afterwards is straightforward rather than a favour.
More in Oxted
Everything we do in Oxted is on the Oxted area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the decorating page.
Common questions
Q.01Is it worth replastering, or can you just fill the cracks?
It depends what the wall sounds like. Isolated hollow patches can be cut out and made good, but a wall that is hollow across large areas will keep cracking however well it is filled, and replastering costs less than decorating twice. The plastering is our own team's work; the painting and wallpapering that follows it is done by decorators we bring in and supervise.
Q.02Can new plaster go straight over old?
Sometimes. If the existing surface is sound, well keyed and not powdery, it can be prepared and skimmed. If it is loose or chalky it comes off first, because a skim is only as good as whatever is holding it up.
Q.03The same crack in our ceiling comes back every year. Why?
Usually because the ceiling is lath and plaster and the key behind it has broken up in that area. Filling treats the symptom, while re-fixing or overboarding treats the cause.
Q.04Do you work in the villages around Oxted?
Yes. We are at 27 High Street, Godstone, a short run along the A25, and we have worked across this part of Surrey and the South East since 2005.
Thinking about decorating in Oxted?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.