Plastering in Billingham
Plastering across Billingham's TS22 and TS23 postcodes: the ICI-era estates at Low Grange, Cowpen Bewley and Wolviston Court, where thirties to fifties semis carry sound backing plaster, tired surfaces and a great many textured ceilings ready for a skim at £300 to £600 a room.
A town built in one go
Billingham grew around the chemical works, and it shows in the housing: street after street of well-built interwar and post-war semis at Low Grange, Billingham Green, Cowpen Bewley, Wolviston Court and Whitehouse, most of them to a handful of repeated designs. For a plasterer that is unusually predictable work. The backing plaster is generally still keyed to the brick, room sizes are consistent, and the standard job is a straight re-skim at £300 to £600 a room once forty years of woodchip and lining paper have come off.
The ceilings
Billingham has as much textured ceiling as anywhere on Teesside, applied through the seventies and eighties in halls, lounges and bedrooms across the estates. Skimming over is the usual route at £300 to £450 a room, since it leaves a pre-2000 coating undisturbed, and over-boarding is what gets specified where a ceiling has cracked along the joist lines. Doing the hall, stairs and landing as one visit is far better value than picking them off separately, and the Artex guide explains the choice.
Cold gables and outside work
The estate gable ends take the weather off the Tees flats, and a fair number were pebbledashed decades ago. Patching and matching roughcast, or a full re-render at £40 to £70 per square metre, are both common here, as is insulated laminate board on the coldest internal face while a room is being done anyway. Whole-house work at £1,800 to £3,500 is where the value sits if you are moving in and the rooms are all the same story.