DH Painter & Decorator repaints shopfronts and business frontages in Brixworth, a short way up the A508 from Northampton (about 6.5 miles). The premises are a small group on Northampton Road, Kennel Terrace and the former Co-op building, all in or beside the conservation area. Dean works around your trading hours and quotes for free.
A small but varied set of frontages
Brixworth has no long high street of shops. Its commercial frontages are scattered: small businesses, light industry and a garage mixed in with houses along Northampton Road, a group of commercial premises on Kennel Terrace including a rendered terrace, and the flat-roofed, rendered former Co-op on the corner of Holcot Road. Add the two listed pubs, the Coach and Horses on Harborough Road and the George Inn on Northampton Road, and the former workhouse entrance block on Spratton Road, which is now in business use.
Each of these needs a different plan. A rendered commercial unit is mostly masonry and fascia board; a pub front is joinery, signage boards and windows around old stone; the workhouse block has a deep orange stone portico and timber sash windows. None of them is a standard glass-and-aluminium parade shop.
Checking the address before choosing a colour
The Article 4(1) direction made in October 2019 takes away the automatic right to repaint the main frontage of the properties it names, or any wall that faces a highway. The list includes Kennel Terrace and numbered properties on Northampton Road (Nos 79-97 odd, 101 and 108-126), as well as parts of Holcot Road and Spratton Road. If your premises are named and you want a new colour or a new scheme, planning permission comes first.
The two pubs are Grade II listed, so a change of colour or finish on them usually also needs listed building consent. We can still help with the brief: the 2017 appraisal asks for joinery in white or sensitive colours based on the original, and the warm ironstone of the village gives a useful starting point for a business colour that will sit well on the street.
Kennel Terrace: render and wide workshop doors
Kennel Terrace takes its name from the Pytchley Hunt kennels, which stood there from 1819 until the Hunt left in 1966. The commercial premises there include a rendered terrace and wide former workshop doors. Those doors are big timber panels that flex and take a lot of weather, so they suit a flexible coating, oil-based or microporous, rather than a rigid gloss. The render takes a breathable masonry paint after algae treatment and crack repair. Some of the three-storey buildings here are tall, so we plan ladder or tower access at the quote.
Working on a busy road while you trade
Northampton Road is wide and busy, and many front brick walls along it have been removed for off-street parking, so shoppers and vans often pull up right in front of the premises. We agree working hours with you, do the entrance at the start or end of the day so it stays usable, sign wet paint clearly and keep ladders out of the parking bays during opening hours where we can. On the listed numbers between 110 and 116, the red brick and blue engineering-brick front walls are better cleaned than painted.
Flat-roofed buildings such as the former Co-op also deserve a look at the parapet and roof edge, since water running off a flat roof often stains the render below and causes the fascia paint to fail early. We check those details at the survey. Shopfronts sit within our wider shopfront painting service, and the Brixworth area page links to our other local services. Before you collect quotes, our notes on choosing a decorator list what to ask.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
