Plaster and wall repair

What we repair

Most plaster work falls into a few recognisable shapes. Holes from door handles, furniture impacts, mounting fixtures. Cracks above and below doorways and windows — usually from minor movement, sometimes from structural issues. Sagging or stained ceilings from leaks above. Damaged cornices, mostly along ceiling lines and around lights. And the post-renovation patches where electricians, plumbers, or builders have left holes.

Where the damage is cosmetic and the wall is sound, we patch. Where the underlying substrate has failed — old plaster pulling away from lath, water-damaged sections beyond saving — we replace the affected sheet rather than skim over the problem.

How we make it disappear

Plaster work is judged by whether you can see it after the paint dries. The technique is multi-pass: rough fill, set with a fine compound, sand back flush, repeat where needed, finish with light feathering at the edges. Done well, the repair disappears under paint.

Cornice repair is more finicky because the profile has to match. We hold reference profiles for the common Victorian, Edwardian, and post-war shapes; for unusual cornices we cast from an undamaged section of the same wall.

Where the damage is large enough that a full re-skim is more economical than spot patches, we'll quote that instead.

Wall damage in rental properties

Rental wall damage is steady, predictable, and mostly cosmetic. Door handles punching through walls is the most common (a doorstop on every door fixes it before it happens — we'll install those as a preventative job). Picture frames falling, furniture corners, and child-related impacts make up most of the rest.

For agencies, the practical workflow is to bundle small patches into a single visit rather than calling a plasterer for each one. Most units accumulate enough small damage between tenancies to make a single visit worthwhile.

Common scenarios

• Door handle has punched through the wall behind it. Outgoing tenant's fault per the bond report — patch, set, sand, paint.
• Hairline crack has reappeared above a doorway each spring for three years. Likely seasonal movement; the fix is a flexible patch that handles the cycle.
• Ceiling stain from a fixed roof leak. Source is dry now; patch and paint to make the stain disappear.
• Electrician has rerouted a wall point, leaving a hole behind the previous outlet. Patch flush before the painter arrives.
• Multiple small marks across two bedrooms and the hallway. Single visit, scoped quote, sanded back to paint-ready before the new tenancy starts.