We provide conservation-grade lime plastering across Edinburgh, City of Edinburgh. Whether you are repairing damp internal walls in a harled rubble walling property, stripping failed cement render, or repointing stonework, our craftsmen work only in lime — the material Edinburgh's period buildings were originally constructed with.
Damp in Edinburgh homes is usually caused by the wrong material rather than a faulty building. Where cement render has been applied over harled rubble walling, stripping it back and re-rendering in lime normally resolves the damp within a single drying season.
Around Edinburgh you will find tenement blocks alongside later Georgian New Town townhouses. Both were built with lime, and both suffer when a modern impermeable finish is applied over the top — the moisture has to go somewhere, and it goes into the masonry and the timbers.
Softness is the point. Traditional City of Edinburgh walling of harled rubble walling is weaker than modern cement, so a hard mortar concentrates stress and moisture into the masonry face. Lime is deliberately the weaker material, and that is what makes it correct for Edinburgh's older homes.
Every Edinburgh job begins with diagnosis: identifying where moisture is entering before any plaster goes on. We then remove failed material, prepare the harled rubble walling, and build the lime up in coats, allowing each one to cure before the next.
Because traditional harling in lime is the historically correct external finish, Edinburgh throws up a particular set of problems. These are representative examples of how we resolve them in lime.
sandstone tenement flat — Persistent ground-floor damp in a sandstone tenement flat in Edinburgh previously treated with injected DPC and waterproof render. Once the real moisture path was identified, the walls were replastered in lime and the damp resolved without chemical treatment.
New Town townhouse — A commercial New Town townhouse on a Edinburgh high street within a conservation area. Decayed render and mouldings were reinstated in lime, run in situ to the original profiles, and finished to match neighbouring frontages.
converted steading — Blown gypsum plaster and tide marks on the ground floor of a converted steading in City of Edinburgh. 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.
Yes. We take samples of the surviving mortar or plaster from the Scottish sandstone first, then match aggregate, colour and texture so the repair blends into the original rather than patching over it.
It depends on the wall and its exposure. For most City of Edinburgh work we use hot-mixed lime harling, applied in successive thrown coats and limewashed, stepping up to a more hydraulic lime only where exposure or the substrate genuinely demands 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 Edinburgh and provide a written, no-obligation quote.
We do. Lime repointing is a large part of our Edinburgh 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 regularly work on listed and conservation-area properties across City of Edinburgh and can supply mix specifications and sample panels for Edinburgh conservation officers where consent is required.
Our lime plastering, render and pointing teams also cover these towns and cities close to Edinburgh in City of Edinburgh and the wider Scotland area.
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