DH Painter & Decorator decorates hallways, stairwells and landings in Camp Hill, the 1980s Hunsbury Hill estate within Danes Camp Way. Dean prepares and paints walls, ceilings, spindles and woodwork with the stairs kept usable, and quotes free.
Straight flights in compact 1980s houses
The homes on Camp Hill are mostly small. Records show two-bedroom semis on Harksome Hill of about 721 square feet built between 1983 and 1990, and the Squares off Dayrell Road are rows of terraces with a few leasehold flats. Houses of this size and age nearly always have a single straight flight rising from a narrow hall to a small landing, with the bathroom and bedrooms opening straight off it. There is no grand stairwell, but the wall above the stairs is still out of reach from a normal stepladder, and the landing ceiling is usually where cracks along the board joints show first.
Because the flight is straight and fairly short, the access kit is modest. A combination ladder with independent legs on the treads and a short staging board across to the landing covers most of these stairwells. Nothing rests on a banister or balances on a single tread. How we set up on larger and more awkward stairwells is explained on our hallway, stairs and landing page.
Why the walls wear out first
In a narrow estate hall, everything that comes into the house brushes the walls: shopping, bikes, buggies, a dog coming in from the country park. The bottom metre of wall and the outside string of the staircase take the knocks, and so does the corner where the hall turns into the kitchen. Standard emulsion marks easily and will not survive scrubbing. For these halls we recommend a durable, washable finish on the walls, a satin or eggshell on the woodwork rather than flat paint, and filling every dent and chip before painting so the new surface starts flat.
Spindles and handrails get handled every day. Taking off the old coatings where they have built up, then priming and painting them with a hard-wearing trim paint, makes more difference to how a small staircase looks than most people expect.
Colour on a north-facing slope
Camp Hill sits on the north-eastern side of Hunsbury Hill, so many houses have front doors and hall windows facing north or east. A hall with one small window and that orientation gets little direct light for most of the day. Cool greys and blue-whites tend to look flat and cold there. Warm whites, soft stone shades and mid-tones hold up better, and a slightly lighter colour on the landing ceiling helps light from the top window carry down the stairwell. If you are stuck between shades, we can paint test patches on the hall wall and leave them for you to look at in the morning and evening.
Shared entrances and leasehold flats in the Squares
Some of the homes in the Squares, such as in Benjamin Square, are leasehold flats. Inside your own flat the hallway is yours to decorate. A communal entrance or shared stair is normally the freeholder’s or managing agent’s responsibility, and the lease may require their consent before it is repainted, or specify the colours. Check before booking communal work, and we can quote for the managing agent directly if that is simpler.
Living with the job while it happens
Your stairs are the only route between the bedrooms and the rest of the house, so we keep a clear path up and down at all times. Treads are protected with dust sheets taped so they cannot slip, and we work from the top down so you are never walking through wet paint. Where the van has to park in a shared court or off a living street such as Summerfields or Merry Hill, we carry the ladders and boards in at the start and leave them set up until the stairwell is finished. Our guide to choosing a decorator lists what to ask before you book, and our Camp Hill area page covers the rest of what we do on the estate.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
