Lime Plastering is a specialist lime plastering contractor working throughout Blyth and the wider Northumberland area. As a smaller Northumberland town with a high proportion of older property, Blyth has a large stock of pre-1919 property built from carboniferous sandstone — walls that were designed to breathe. We restore them using traditional lime plaster, lime render and lime mortar, never cement or gypsum.
Sympathetic repair in Blyth means matching what is already there — the aggregate colour, the coat thickness, the texture of the original float finish. We take samples from the existing carboniferous sandstone before mixing so new work sits alongside old rather than standing out.
Blyth and the villages around it retain a good deal of carboniferous sandstone. Where that material is soft — as most traditional Northumberland walling is — the mortar and plaster must always be softer than the masonry, so it wears sacrificially instead of eroding the stone or brick face.
Using lime in Blyth is a conservation requirement as often as a technical one. It keeps the property eligible for heritage consent, preserves original detailing, and gives a soft, hand-finished surface no modern board can replicate.
Once the survey is agreed, we protect the site, strip back the failed finish, and apply lime in successive coats with proper curing between each. In cold North Sea winds and hard winter frosts we control drying with damp hessian or sheeting so the work carbonates evenly rather than cracking.
The jobs below are typical of the work we carry out on Blyth property — the building types and problems vary, but the answer is always breathable lime rather than cement.
whinstone farmstead — Sagging original ceilings in a whinstone farmstead near the centre of Blyth. Sound laths were retained and re-keyed, missing sections re-lathed in riven timber, and the ceiling made good with haired lime plaster to match the surviving profile.
coastal sandstone cottage — Blown gypsum plaster and tide marks on the ground floor of a coastal sandstone cottage in Northumberland. We hacked off the gypsum, applied a haired lime base coat and a lime putty finish, and specified clay paint so the wall could keep drying.
Tyneside flat — Weather-facing walls of a Tyneside flat taking the full force of cold North Sea winds and hard winter frosts. We specified NHL 3.5 or hot-mixed lime specified for frost exposure, with sacrificial pointing, built the render up in generous coats and protected the work while it carbonated to avoid shrinkage cracking.
We do. Lime repointing is a large part of our Blyth workload — raking out hard cement pointing and replacing it with a softer, sacrificial lime mortar that protects the masonry face instead of eroding it.
Yes. We take samples of the surviving mortar or plaster from the carboniferous sandstone first, then match aggregate, colour and texture so the repair blends into the original rather than patching over it.
Every property is different, so we do not publish fixed prices. Cost depends on the substrate, the number of coats, access and whether failed cement has to be removed first. We survey the property in Blyth and provide a written, no-obligation quote.
We do. Blyth is one of our core areas and we travel throughout Northumberland and the surrounding parts of North East England for lime plastering, lime render, lime pointing and heritage repair.
Our lime plastering, render and pointing teams also cover these towns and cities close to Blyth in Northumberland and the wider North East England area.
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