Ceiling Plastering & Repairs in Halifax & West Yorkshire

Most ceiling jobs fall into one of three fixes. A patch works when the damage is local and the rest of the ceiling is sound. A full skim works when the ceiling is solid but cracked, uneven, or textured. New boards are the answer when the old ceiling has come away from the joists, sags, or has been patched so many times there is nothing sound left to skim onto.

We'll press-test the ceiling on the site visit, look at it with a torch held flat to the surface, and tell you which one applies. If a patch would always show against a tired ceiling, we'll say so and price the skim as an option rather than leave you with a ghost outline.

A leak from a bath, a shower tray, or a slipped slate leaves the same signs: a yellow-brown ring, bubbling paint, and sometimes a section that has dropped. The leak itself has to be fixed first, and the ceiling has to dry out properly before we touch it, otherwise the stain comes straight back through new paint.

Once it's dry we cut out anything that has lost its strength, board and skim the hole, and blend it into the existing ceiling. Stain block goes on before emulsion so the ring doesn't reappear a week later.

Sound artex can usually be skimmed straight over once it's been prepared, which gives you a flat modern ceiling without scraping the old texture off.

One honest note: artex applied before 2000 may contain asbestos. We'd recommend getting a sample tested before anyone sands, scrapes, or drills into an older textured ceiling. Skimming over a sound surface is often the approach that avoids disturbing it at all.

A lot of the terraces and cottages around Hebden Bridge and Halifax still have their original lath-and-plaster ceilings. When the plaster loses its grip on the laths, the ceiling starts to bow, cracks spread, and pieces can drop.

There are two realistic options. Overboarding fixes new plasterboard through the old ceiling into the joists and skims it, which is quicker and far less messy. Taking the old ceiling down to the joists is a dirtier job but gives a fresh start, and is often needed where the joists are uneven or there is wiring to run. We'll talk through both with you before anything comes down.

Bathrooms are where ceilings take the most punishment: steam every morning, the odd overflow from upstairs, and extractors that don't always pull their weight. On a recent bathroom we boarded the ceiling, taped every joint, and skimmed it with the new tiles, bath and basin covered and protected the whole way through.

We'll talk through moisture-resistant board where it's needed, and check the extractor is actually doing its job, because a new ceiling in a room that can't vent steam will be back to peeling paint before long.

A fresh skim goes on pink and dries out to a pale, even colour. It needs to be properly dry before any paint goes on, and the first coat over new plaster is a thinned mist coat so the finish coats grip. We'll give you a realistic date to paint, or do the decorating ourselves so there is no hand-off between trades.