Macks Plastering

Macks Plastering Macks Plastering is based in Hampshire and offers a professional plastering service. Qualified & Experienced
Macks Plastering is run by Adam Mackenzie.

Based in Upton Grey (Hampshire) near to the Hook and Basingstoke areas, Macks Plastering is a family run plastering contractor covering North Hampshire and surrounding areas. Macks Plastering was previously located in Farnborough, and still operates in this area. Adam completed his City & Guilds qualifications over the year of 2007, and Macks Plastering was established in 2008. Adam believes in tr

ansparency, and unlike some trades does not feel the need to elaborate on his experience or skills. Prior to embarking on a career in plastering, Adam's background was in account management. The change was brought on following the realisation that life is too short to do a job that does not reward nor challenge you in the way that he feels plastering does. After he qualified, Adam spent two years' subcontracting with other plastering firms (including one with two generations and over forty years' of plastering experience behind them) whilst continuing to build up his own business. His time with these firms not only honed his skills, but helped to develop the attention to detail that Macks Plastering is known for today. Our Approach
We believe that what the customer wants most are two things - honesty and good workmanship. Our aim with Macks Plastering is to provide both on every single job undertaken, week in week out. As a team we are very proud of the excellent client feedback that Macks Plastering receives, and the reputation that we have built up. At Macks Plastering we don't make promises that we can't keep. We don't offer endless services that we are not skilled in. We don't book in work and not turn up. We do what we know and we stick to this. Adam and his team are passionate about their work, and in making sure that the expectations of every single client are exceeded, leaving them happy to recommend us. The number of outstanding reviews that Macks Plastering has from customers speaks volumes. Peace of Mind
We appreciate that employing a tradesman can be daunting. Our team will create minimum disturbance to you and your home or work place with any work carried out. You can expect our plasterers to always be polite and do their utmost not to disturb your usual routine. We make minimum mess, provide extensive plastic sheeting and will always clear up at the end of a job. Macks Plastering holds Public Liability Insurance up to £1,000,000 to cover for any accidental damage done to you or your property whilst we are on site. Full employers insurance is also in place.

"How much to plaster a room?" It is the first question almost everybody asks, and Adam will not give you a number down t...
31/08/2026

"How much to plaster a room?" It is the first question almost everybody asks, and Adam will not give you a number down the phone. Here is why that is in your favour rather than a way of dodging it.

Two rooms the same size can be very different jobs. One needs a skim over sound plaster. The other has blown plaster that has to come off, boarding, corner beads, a ceiling too high to reach off a hop-up and no parking within fifty meters. Same floor area, nothing like the same amount of work.

A price guessed blind is either padded to cover the worst case, which means you overpay when the job turns out to be simple, or it gets revised halfway through once the wall comes off, which is worse. Neither of those is a good deal for you.

So the way it works here is straightforward. Send a photo or two and Adam will tell you roughly what he is looking at. If it needs a proper look he will come and see it, free and with no obligation, and give you a written estimate.

An estimate rather than a quote, deliberately. Nobody can see behind a wall until it comes off, and occasionally what is behind it changes the job. If that happens Adam will stop and tell you before he carries on, not afterwards. What he will not do is add anything on quietly and hope you do not notice.

No sales pitch, no pressure, and no charge for asking.

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

Buyers will not tell you why they went with the other house. They will not mention the hairline cracks in the hall, or t...
28/08/2026

Buyers will not tell you why they went with the other house.

They will not mention the hairline cracks in the hall, or the patchy wall behind the sofa, or the artex in the back bedroom. They will just come away with a feeling that the place has been let go a bit, and that feeling gets priced in long before anybody says anything out loud.

It is the same in the photographs. Flat walls and smooth ceilings photograph clean and make rooms look bigger and brighter. Textured and patchy walls catch the light in ways that make a room look tired even when it is perfectly tidy.

Sorting the walls and ceilings is one of the least expensive things you can do before you go on the market, and unlike a new kitchen it improves every single room it touches.

The timing matters though. Plastering has to happen before the decorating, the decorating has to happen before the photographs, and the photographs happen before you list. If you are aiming to be on the market this autumn, this is the point in the year to sort it.

Ask Adam what it would take. Estimates are free and there is no obligation at all. 👍

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

A tired ceiling in a period property in North Warnborough, boarded and plastered, with every beam left exactly as it was...
26/08/2026

A tired ceiling in a period property in North Warnborough, boarded and plastered, with every beam left exactly as it was.

This is the bit people worry about with older houses. They want the ceiling to stop looking tired, but they do not want to lose the reason they bought the place.

Working up to old timber is slow. Nothing is straight, nothing is square and nothing is the same width twice, so every line has to be cut in by hand and followed rather than measured. Take a shortcut anywhere along it and the eye goes straight to the beam and sees the gap.

Done properly you get a flat, bright modern ceiling above a room that still reads as three hundred years old.

If you have an older property and you have been putting a ceiling off because you are worried about what it would do to the character, that is worth a conversation. 👍

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

Most people ring a plasterer a week to a fortnight too late. If you're planning work this autumn, here's the order that ...
24/08/2026

Most people ring a plasterer a week to a fortnight too late.

If you're planning work this autumn, here's the order that saves the most money and the most arguments.

Structural work first. Walls out, openings formed, anything involving a builder.

Then first fix. Cables and pipes chased into the walls, sockets and lights positioned, stud work and door linings in. All of it before plastering, because every change afterwards means cutting into a finished wall.

Then boarding, then plastering.

Then the bit people skip. New plaster is extremely porous and drinks the water straight out of paint, which is what causes the flaking and peeling. It needs to dry properly first, and then a mist coat, watered down emulsion, before any normal paint goes near it.

After that the order varies, and anyone who tells you there's only one right way hasn't been on enough jobs. Some fit second fix first, so skirting can be caulked and painted in place. Others get the walls done while the room is empty and easy, then fit sockets, switches and skirting afterwards so nothing gets splashed. Both work. What matters is deciding before anyone turns up rather than halfway through.

Flooring last, whichever way round you go.

The two most expensive mistakes are booking a decorator before a plasterer, and laying a new floor before the walls are done.

If you're working out a rough sequence, ask Adam where he needs to fit. He'd rather have that conversation early than get a call the week the decorator is due. 👍

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

There is nowhere to hide on a curve. A straight wall is forgiving. You have an edge to work to and a level to check your...
21/08/2026

There is nowhere to hide on a curve.

A straight wall is forgiving. You have an edge to work to and a level to check yourself against. A circular window has neither. Every line has to be cut in by eye and held true all the way round, and if it drifts even slightly your eye follows the curve and finds it immediately.

This one is in a two hundred year old stable cottage in Upton Grey. The porch is all arches and old cracked plaster and the window sits in the middle of it, so the finish had to run flush to the frame, hold the curve the whole way round, and then sit quietly enough that nobody standing in the finished porch gives the plastering a thought.

That is the whole job, really. A good plastering job is not something you notice. It is something you stop noticing. Most jobs are nothing like this awkward, and the same skill is what makes an ordinary wall look effortless.

There is space in the diary over the next few weeks. If you have something you have been putting off, now is a good time to ask.

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

You filled it. You sanded it. You painted it. Six months later, there it is again. Filler treats the mark on the surface...
19/08/2026

You filled it. You sanded it. You painted it. Six months later, there it is again.

Filler treats the mark on the surface. It does nothing about the reason the mark appeared.

Most cracks that keep returning are doing it for one of three reasons. The wall is moving very slightly with the seasons, which is normal in most houses and needs a repair that can flex rather than a rigid filler. Or the crack is sitting over a joint between two boards that was never properly taped. Or, commonly in older houses, the plaster behind it has come away from the wall completely and the crack is just the part you can see.

There is a ten second test for that last one. Tap along the wall with your knuckle. Where it sounds solid, the plaster is stuck to the wall. Where it sounds hollow or drummy, it is not, and no amount of filler will hold it there.

A proper repair means cutting back to something sound, taping and re-skimming so the finished surface is continuous. It is more work than a tube of filler on a Saturday, and it is the last time you have to think about it.

Send Adam a photo of the crack and he will tell you which of the three you are dealing with. 👍

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

You have spent two coats and a whole weekend on it, and it still looks awful. It is almost never the paint. Paint does n...
17/08/2026

You have spent two coats and a whole weekend on it, and it still looks awful. It is almost never the paint.

Paint does not hide a poor wall. It advertises it. Modern matt emulsion in particular has almost no build to it, so every dip, every old filler patch and every trowel mark comes straight through, and the more coats you put on the more obvious it gets. Then the light moves round in the afternoon and shows you all of it again from a different angle.

There is no decorating your way out of it. If the wall is not flat, the paint has nothing flat to sit on.

The order that saves people money is boring but it works. Sort the walls, let them dry properly, mist coat, then decorate. Doing it the other way round means paying for the decorating twice.

If you are planning to decorate, it is worth getting the walls looked at first. Adam will tell you whether they need skimming or whether they are fine as they are. 👍

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

This is Adam. Booking a tradesman you have never met is a small act of faith. You are letting someone into your house, o...
14/08/2026

This is Adam. Booking a tradesman you have never met is a small act of faith. You are letting someone into your house, often while you are out at work, and hoping they turn up when they said they would and treat the place like somebody lives in it.

Adam qualified in 2007 and has run Macks Plastering since 2008. Before that he worked in account management, which is an unusual route into a trade and probably explains the thing customers mention most, which is that he listens to what you actually want before he tells you anything.

His first couple of years after qualifying were spent working alongside other firms, including one with two generations and forty years of plastering behind it. That is where the attention to detail came from.

He works on his own, so the person who comes out to estimate the job is the person who turns up and does it. There is no team you have not met. Floors and furniture get covered before anything comes out of the van, and the room gets left tidy at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job.

He will also tell you when something does not need doing. If a mark will take filler and a bit of patience, he will say so rather than price you up for a wall. It has cost him the odd job over the years and it is most of the reason people ring him back.

He is based near Odiham and works across Hook, Upton Grey, Basingstoke, Alton and the villages in between.

Call or text him on 07986 999938.

This living room ceiling in Hook had artex on it until last week. You'd never know now, which is rather the point. Arte...
12/08/2026

This living room ceiling in Hook had artex on it until last week. You'd never know now, which is rather the point.

Artex had its moment. The trouble is that it dates a room faster than almost anything else in it, it holds dust in every peak, and it is awkward to decorate anywhere near. Most people who have it have long since stopped seeing it, right up until they see the room without it.

Skimming over sound artex gives you a flat ceiling that reflects light properly and takes paint evenly. It changes how bright and how tall a room feels, and it is one of the very few jobs that makes an entire room look renovated without touching anything else in it.

It is also a much smaller job than most people assume, and in most cases the artex does not need to come off at all.

If you have been looking up at that ceiling for years, ask Adam what it would take. 👍

Call or text Adam on 07986 999938.

Covering Hook, Odiham, Basingstoke, Alton and the surrounding villages.

Address

21 Little Hoddington
Basingstoke
RG252RN

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 6pm
Tuesday 8am - 6pm
Wednesday 8am - 6pm
Thursday 8am - 6pm
Friday 8am - 6pm
Saturday 8am - 2pm

Telephone

+447986999938

Website

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