The plastering in a Walthamstow terrace is usually a hundred and thirty years old, and what is behind it changes everything about the job. Original lath and plaster is timber laths nailed across the joists with lime plaster pushed through to form a key on the back, and when that key crumbles, which it does, slowly, from vibration and damp and a century of doors slamming, the plaster stops being held to anything. It sounds hollow, it moves under your palm, and skimming straight over it buys you a smooth wall for about eighteen months. The honest answer on a lot of E17 ceilings is that the lath has gone and the ceiling wants taking down and boarding, which is dustier and dearer than the phone quote you were hoping for, and considerably cheaper than doing it twice. Where the lath is sound the right job is a proper skim: the surface stabilised, a bonding coat where it is uneven, then two coats of finish worked up to a flat, paint-ready wall. Walthamstow also has more flat conversions than almost anywhere in the borough, and conversion work brings its own plastering: new stud walls boarded and taped, old chimney breasts removed and made good, ceilings levelled where two flats meet at different heights. The other job that comes up constantly here is damp-damaged plaster in the back addition, where the original single-skin wall meets a much later kitchen. Replastering that without dealing with what wet it in the first place is money thrown at a symptom, and we will say so rather than take it. Everything is sheeted, the dust is kept to the room it belongs in, and the walls are left flat, filled and genuinely ready for a roller.
