Plasterer and Renderer in Kirkby

Almost nothing here predates the fifties

Kirkby was a village until the nineteen fifties and then became a new town in barely a decade. That gives it a housing stock unlike anywhere else we cover: overwhelmingly post-war, cavity walled, built quickly and largely to the same handful of designs.

For a renderer that has one immediate consequence. Everything is the same age, so when the original render reaches the end of its life it does so across whole streets at once rather than house by house. A lot of what we are asked to look at here is a finish that is simply worn out rather than one that was ever wrong.

Insulation is often the real reason people ask

A lot of Kirkby enquiries start as a render question and turn out to be a warmth question. Post-war cavity walls are often poorly filled or not filled at all, and a rendered insulation system over the outside deals with both at once: the wall gets warmer and the house gets a new finish.

It costs more than render on its own and it changes the depth at reveals and eaves, so it is a decision to make before anything is priced rather than an upgrade partway through.

Because so much of Kirkby was built to the same designs, a street tends to want the same answer. If two or three neighbours are thinking about it at once it is worth asking us to price it as one job. The scaffold and the set-up are the expensive part and they are shared.