DH Painter & Decorator paints internal doors, door frames, skirting boards, architraves and spindles in Camp Hill, NN4. Dean covers the estate, 1.8 miles south-west of Northampton town centre, and gives free quotes for one room's woodwork or every door in the house.
What forty years does to estate softwood
Camp Hill went up on the north-eastern slope of Hunsbury Hill during the 1980s, and property records put the semis on Harksome Hill at 1983 to 1990. The joinery inside those houses is now roughly four decades old. On houses of this period it is typically plain machined softwood skirting and architrave, often with the lightweight internal doors common in 1980s building. It has usually been painted several times by several owners, so the edges have rounded over, the panels carry drips from earlier coats, and the old oil gloss has gone cream behind doors and along the landing.
Another top coat over that would only lock the faults in. On this age of woodwork the useful work is underneath: washing off grease near handles, sanding back runs, filling dents and splits, caulking the gap that opens where a skirting has pulled away from the wall, and sealing any bare knots before priming. The full method and product choices sit on our door, skirting and woodwork painting page. Here we cover what is particular to the estate.
A lot of joinery in not much floor space
The two-bedroom semis on Harksome Hill are around 721 square feet. In a house that size the doors, frames and skirting runs take up a large share of what you see in each room, and a small landing can have four or five doors opening onto it within a couple of metres. That has two effects. Tired woodwork is more noticeable than it would be in a bigger house, and refreshing it changes the feel of the whole place for relatively little work.
It also means the job is short. Doing every door, frame and skirting in a compact semi is a matter of days, not weeks, and most of that time goes into preparation and drying between coats. We take doors off their hinges where that gives a cleaner finish on the edges, and rehang them once the paint has hardened enough to handle.
Satin, eggshell or gloss for these rooms
Water-based satin is the usual replacement for old yellowed gloss. It stays white, wipes clean and has a softer sheen that suits small rooms, where high gloss can look harsh in a narrow hall. Eggshell is flatter again and sits well against the mid-tone walls that suit the many north- and east-facing rooms on the hillside. If you want to keep traditional gloss, an oil-based system is still an option, with the yellowing it brings in rooms that get little sun.
For the retirement bungalows at Parsons Meade, which are social-rent homes managed by Northampton Partnership Homes, any woodwork repainting would be arranged through the landlord. Low-odour water-based products are the sensible choice there, and in any home where someone stays in during the work.
The listed farmhouse is a different job
Hunsbury Hill Farmhouse on Rotherthorpe Road is Grade II listed: 18th-century ashlar with a Welsh slate roof, sash windows with glazing bars under cambered arches, and two canted bays. Its joinery is of a completely different age and quality from the estate houses around it. Repainting there means like-for-like finishes, no stripping of historic timber without good reason, and checking with the owner whether listed building consent is needed before anything changes. It is not a job to treat like a 1980s internal door.
Booking, parking and getting in
Several streets on the estate are mapped as living streets, with shared surfaces where the van may need to sit away from your frontage, and the terraces in the Squares off Dayrell Road face onto grouped courts. Woodwork jobs need little equipment, so that is rarely a problem, but tell us where the nearest parking is when you ask for a quote. Prices depend on how much preparation the existing paint needs, so we give a fixed quote after seeing it; our cost guide explains what drives the figure. For the wider picture of decorating in the area, see our Camp Hill page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
