Your Local Nelson Specialist For Patch Repairs

Nelson keeps Lee busy with patch plastering and repairs, and the reason is in the building stock. Late Victorian and Edwardian weaving terraces in long uniform runs, solid walled, with lath and plaster ceilings and near-universal artex overlay. Work with that rather than against it and the result lasts. Ignore it, price the job on area alone, and you get the patchy, cracked finishes that give the trade a bad name around here.

Not everything needs a whole room doing. A ceiling stained and blown after a leak at the top of the stairs, a hole where a radiator or a boiler came off the wall, a crack that has opened up above a doorway, or the trench an electrician left after a rewire. These are half-day and one-day jobs, and they are some of the most satisfying work there is, because the whole point is that when it is done you cannot tell where it was.

Where the damage came from water, the cause gets flagged before the repair goes in. Plenty of the ceiling repairs Lee is called to in Burnley and Rossendale trace back to the same handful of causes: a slipped slate, a blocked gutter overflowing behind a downpipe, or a failed seal around a shower tray. Fixing the plaster without fixing that just books you a second repair next winter.

What that means for a Nelson job in practice is that the quote follows the property rather than a rate per square metre. Two houses on the same street can be very different jobs once you know what is behind the surface, and patch plastering and repairs is one of the areas where that gap is widest. Lee looks first, prices second, and tells you which of the two you have got.

The terraces here are largely late Victorian and Edwardian, built in long uniform runs, and they share a set of predictable characteristics. Solid walls, original lath and plaster ceilings in many of the older ones, and a near-universal layer of textured coating applied at some point in the seventies. Add a century of fireplaces coming out, walls being papered and stripped and papered again, and rewires chased through, and you have the classic Nelson wall: sound underneath but a patchwork on the surface.

That is exactly what a skim is for. Two coats of finish plaster over a properly prepared background puts the entire history behind you in a day, and once the decorator has been in the room reads as new. It is far and away the most requested job in this town, and doing hundreds of them means the awkward bits, the reveals, the meter cupboards, the stair walls with no easy access, are routine rather than a surprise.

Practicalities. Most single repairs are done in one visit, half a day to a day depending on how far the damage runs. Small repairs are priced as a half-day or a day rather than by the metre. Send a photo over and Lee will usually give you a figure without needing to visit first. Nelson and the surrounding area, Barrowford, Brierfield, Fence included, are all covered from Rossendale. Floors and furniture get sheeted before work starts, and the debris leaves with Lee rather than sitting in your hallway.