Worthing rendering and plastering for seafront, Art Deco and 1930s homes

Plastering in Worthing, and what makes it different

Worthing gets more of James's exterior rendering work than anywhere else on the round, and the reason is simple geography. The town runs along an open, south-facing stretch of coast with nothing between it and the Channel, so walls take salt-laden air and driving rain from one direction, year after year, with no shelter at all.

That exposure shows up first on the interwar housing that makes up so much of Worthing. The 1930s semis running back from the seafront through West Worthing, Goring and Durrington were very often finished in roughcast or pebbledash, and after ninety years a lot of it is crazed, hollow in patches and stained where water has been tracking down the face. Patching that kind of render is possible, but on a badly weathered elevation a full re-render in a modern through-coloured silicone system usually gives a better result and removes the repainting cycle entirely.

The seafront and near-seafront properties need a step up again. On Marine Parade, Heene and the Brighton Road, salt crystallising inside a dense cement render is what lifts it off the wall, so the specification matters more than the price per square metre. James leans towards breathable or through-coloured systems, a scratch coat left to cure properly rather than rushed, bellcast beads so water throws clear of the base of the wall, and movement joints wherever the background changes. Those details are why one render lasts twenty five years and its neighbour fails in five.

Inland, Worthing is a very different job. Tarring's old village core has genuine period fabric with lime plaster and soft brick, and Broadwater and Offington have solid Victorian and Edwardian stock that behaves much like Brighton's. Here the work returns to the familiar list: re-skimming after wallpaper removal, lath and plaster ceilings that have finally given up, blown plaster on chimney breasts and external walls, and making good after extensions and knock-throughs.

Worthing also has a very high proportion of flats, particularly in the seafront blocks and the converted Victorian houses along the Brighton Road. That brings the same practical questions as Hove: access without a lift, keeping communal areas clean, working to a managing agent's rules on hours and noise, and being straight about drying times so a flat is genuinely usable when it is handed back.

Lancing sits immediately east and is covered from the same round, along with Sompting and Findon on the edges. The housing there follows the same pattern of exposed coastal frontage giving way to more sheltered inland stock, and the render decisions follow the same logic.

Also covered from Worthing: Lancing, Goring-by-Sea, Durrington, Sompting, Findon. If your street sits between two of the towns listed on this site, ring and ask rather than assuming it is out of the way.