Damp-damaged plaster in Walthamstow — salt-contaminated plaster removed and replaced properly, once the reason the wall is wet has been dealt with.
This is the job we most often talk people out of. Plaster is not a damp treatment, and a wall that is still getting wet will push the same stain back through your new paint within a season. In Walthamstow it is nearly always the back addition — a single-skin original wall meeting a much later kitchen extension.
Walthamstow back additions often share a wall with a neighbour's extension or sit under a flat roof, so the water can be coming from the other side of a party wall or from above. Where the cause belongs to another trade, a roofer, a plumber or a damp specialist, you are told who to call, and the plastering is booked for once that work is done.
Gutter, pointing, raised ground level or condensation. Replastering without answering that is money spent on a symptom.
Hygroscopic salts drawn out of the brickwork keep pulling moisture from the air forever. The plaster carrying them has to come off, not be covered.
A sand and cement render coat with additive where it is needed, rather than a gypsum finish straight onto a wall that has been wet.
If the cause is a roof or a drain, we will say so and leave it. We would rather lose the work than do it twice.
Readings taken and noted before and after, so there is a clear record that the wall was dry enough before new plaster went on.
Skirting boards and timber grounds behind damp plaster are checked for rot, and anything that has gone is flagged for a carpenter rather than plastered over.
Send a photo or a quick video of the room on WhatsApp, or get a free fixed quote — no obligation, and we’ll tell you straight what it needs.
We can, and it will come back through your new paint - usually within a few months. The salts in the old plaster pull moisture out of the air indefinitely. Fixing the cause, letting the wall dry, then replastering is the only sequence that holds.
Roughly 25mm a month once the source is fixed, so a solid Victorian wall can take several months. Anyone promising a dry wall in a fortnight is not being straight with you. We will tell you when it is ready rather than working to your decorator's diary.
Very rarely, and that matters because the treatment is completely different. In the Walthamstow terraces it is far more often a bridged damp course, a raised patio, a failed gutter, or condensation in a cold back room. We look outside before we look at the plaster.
Condensation tends to show as mould on cold corners and window reveals, worse in winter and in rooms where washing dries. Penetrating damp tends to be a patch that grows after rain. The pattern on the wall usually tells the story before a meter comes out.
Only with a system designed for it, and even then it is a compromise. For most walls the right answer is to fix the cause, give it time, then plaster once the readings say it is ready.