Lime Plastering is a specialist lime plastering contractor working throughout Kettering and the wider Northamptonshire area. As an established Northamptonshire town, Kettering has a large stock of pre-1919 property built from soft handmade brick — 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 Kettering 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 soft handmade brick before mixing so new work sits alongside old rather than standing out.
Kettering and the villages around it retain a good deal of soft handmade brick. Where that material is soft — as most traditional Northamptonshire 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 Kettering 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 the moderate but frost-prone Midlands winters 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 Kettering property — the building types and problems vary, but the answer is always breathable lime rather than cement.
limestone village cottage — A limestone village cottage in Kettering where hard cement render had trapped moisture against ironstone and limestone rubble. We stripped the render back to bare wall, allowed the masonry to dry, then rebuilt the finish in three coats of lime and limewashed it.
Georgian rectory — Weather-facing walls of a Georgian rectory taking the full force of the moderate but frost-prone Midlands winters. We specified NHL 2 or hot-mixed lime with aggregate matched to the local stone colour, built the render up in generous coats and protected the work while it carbonated to avoid shrinkage cracking.
converted stone barn — Cracked and cement-patched panels on a converted stone barn in Northamptonshire. Failed infill was cut out, laths and staves renewed where rotten, and the panels made good in haired lime so the frame can move without splitting the finish.
We do. Lime repointing is a large part of our Kettering workload — raking out hard cement pointing and replacing it with a softer, sacrificial lime mortar that protects the masonry face instead of eroding it.
Lime cures slowly by carbonation. Allow roughly a week per coat as a guide, and longer in the moderate but frost-prone Midlands winters. We protect the work and control drying so the finish cures evenly rather than cracking or dusting.
We do. Kettering is one of our core areas and we travel throughout Northamptonshire and the surrounding parts of East Midlands for lime plastering, lime render, lime pointing and heritage repair.
Yes, but it must be finished with a breathable product such as limewash, clay paint or mineral silicate paint. We advise on suitable finishes for each Kettering project so breathability is not lost at the final coat.
Our lime plastering, render and pointing teams also cover these towns and cities close to Kettering in Northamptonshire and the wider East Midlands area.
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