Dean paints commercial and community premises in Delapre, NN4, 0.9 miles south of Northampton town centre. Business property here is limited to a handful of sites, including the Delapre Crescent corner shop, the London Road supermarket and filling station, the Boughton Centre and the hospitality spaces at Delapre Abbey.
A residential district with a few commercial sites
Delapre is mostly 1930s housing, and commercial premises within it are few. The ones that exist are quite different from each other:
- Delapre Crescent Stores, a corner convenience shop on Delapre Crescent.
- The Asda supermarket and Far Cotton Service Station on London Road.
- The Boughton Centre on Ransome Road, a social facility.
- The hospitality and events spaces on the Delapre Abbey estate, including The Orangery café and Hibiscus restaurant.
For a wider choice of trade premises you go north-west to St Leonard’s Road, which is Far Cotton’s parade rather than Delapre’s, and Brackmills Industrial Estate to the north-east is in Hardingstone. Rather than one approach for every client, each of the Delapre sites needs its own plan. How we organise commercial work in general, including phasing and keeping premises open, is on our main commercial painting page.
Corner shops in a 1930s terrace
Delapre Crescent Stores trades from among the 1930s terraces. For a shop of that kind, decorating can involve three separate jobs: the sales floor, which has to stay trading; the back-of-house and stockroom; and, often, the outside fascia and door. We split the sales floor into sections, painting behind shelving bays a run at a time and using low-odour, fast-drying paints so the shop can open as normal. Outside signage and fascia work is covered on our shopfront painting page.
Where a shop building shares the solid brick construction of the houses around it, damp staining on an inside wall may come from an outside fault such as a gutter or failed pointing, and that is traced before anything is repainted.
Premises on London Road
London Road is the A508 trunk road. For any business on it, external work means planning around fast traffic, deliveries and customer cars. Typical considerations are:
| Issue | How it shapes the job |
|---|---|
| Fast-moving traffic alongside the site | Ladders and access towers set back from the road edge, with barriers where needed |
| Forecourts and car parks in use | Work zones coned off in phases, agreed with the site manager |
| Traffic grime on walls and doors | Washing down and degreasing before any coating |
| Mature trees along the abbey side of the road | Shade and leaf debris mean slower drying; we pick dry, mild days |
A supermarket or filling station normally comes with its own contractor rules and paint references from the operator. We work to those and supply method statements and risk assessments on request.
Community and event spaces
A building like the Boughton Centre is used by different groups through the week, so decorating works well in blocks around the booking calendar. Halls and corridors take knocks from chairs and tables, so a scrubbable wall finish and an eggshell or satin on doors and frames lasts longer between repaints.
Anything on the Delapre Abbey estate
Delapre Abbey is Grade II* listed and sits inside the Delapre Park Conservation Area, designated in 2007. The stable block and coach house, the orangery and the thatched game larder are each listed at Grade II. Any decoration that affects the character of a listed building needs listed building consent, which the owner or managing trust applies for. The abbey is mostly local ironstone, with some brick, a rendered library elevation and lime-based work. Those surfaces need breathable mineral paint or limewash; acrylic masonry paint traps moisture in old stone and lime and can cause it to decay.
The ‘A Stable Future’ plan for the unused brick stables is the kind of scheme where a heritage specification will be set by architects and conservation officers, and the decorator works to it. We can take on painting on a heritage site where the consent and specification are already in place.
For what affects commercial pricing, see the cost guide, and for other services we offer locally, the Delapre area page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
