Painters and Decorators in Redhill (RH1)
Redhill runs from the tight Victorian terraces near the station out to the 1930s semis and the newer estate housing around Whitebushes and Salfords. Where decorating follows building work — a wall taken out, a rewire, a new bathroom — the making good is what decides how the finish looks.
Filled slots, patches and boxing in
After an electrician has been through a house there are slots cut into the plaster for the cables, and after a wall comes out there is a patch where the old one met the ceiling.
Both get filled. The question is whether they get finished. A cable run filled level but not feathered out and sanded reads as a shallow trough down the wall in any light coming across it, and no number of coats will hide it. A patch filled with something smoother or coarser than the wall around it shows as a change in texture through the paint.
Why a patch never matches, and what to do about it
Two things beat a spot repair. First, fresh plaster and filler are more porous than the wall around them, so unless they are sealed the finish coat sinks in and flashes through as a duller area. Second, paint changes over time. The same colour from the same brand, put on two years apart, will not match the wall it is going next to, and on a ceiling in daylight that difference is obvious. So a repair gets sealed first, and then the surface is painted corner to corner: the whole wall, or the whole ceiling, rather than the mended area alone. It costs a little more in paint and almost nothing in labour, and it is the only way the repair genuinely disappears.
Textured ceilings, and the rest of the stock
Textured ceiling coatings turn up all over houses redecorated in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and any applied before 2000 may contain asbestos.
They are not sanded, scraped or dry-brushed for that reason. They get tested first, and where the result allows, the usual answer is to overboard and skim rather than attack the texture, which gives a flat ceiling that takes paint properly. Elsewhere the stock varies a good deal: the 1930s semis may still have original plaster worth sounding before it is priced, while the newer estate housing further south is plasterboard with a thin skim, contract emulsion and shrinkage cracking at the board joints. Different preparation, different price, specified separately rather than lumped together.
More in Redhill
Everything we do in Redhill is on the Redhill area sheet, and the full detail of how we approach this trade is on the decorating page.
Common questions
Q.01Can you just paint the patch rather than the whole wall?
We can, and it will show. Fresh plaster is more porous and paint shifts with age, so a spot repair reads as a patch. Painting corner to corner costs a little more in material and almost nothing in time.
Q.02Who makes good after the electrician has been?
We do. Plastering and making good are on our own books, so the wall is finished properly before anything is painted rather than left as a filled line for someone else to cover over. The painting that follows it is done by decorators we bring in and manage, on a price we wrote, so one firm answers for the repair and for the coat that goes over it.
Q.03Our ceiling has a textured coating. Is that a problem?
It needs testing before anyone disturbs it if it went up before 2000, because coatings of that age can contain asbestos. Where it is safe to go ahead, overboarding and skimming usually beats trying to remove it.
Q.04Do you cover the whole of Redhill?
Yes, from the streets near the station out to Whitebushes and Salfords. We are at 27 High Street, Godstone, a short drive away, and have been building and refurbishing since 2005.
Thinking about decorating in Redhill?
Tell us what you are planning. We come out, look at the job properly and give you a price for it.