Dean decorates hallways, stairwells and landings in Delapre, 0.9 miles south of Northampton town centre in NN4. Most homes are 1930s terraces and semis with a narrow hall and a straight flight of stairs, and many are busy family homes or shared lets that need finishes built for heavy wear.
A narrow hall and a straight flight
A typical 1930s terrace on Delapre Crescent Road, Forest Road or Eastfield Road has a front door opening onto a slim hallway, a straight staircase rising alongside the party wall and a small landing at the top. Straight flights are easier to scaffold than the winding stairs found in older cottages, because a stair platform or combination ladder can sit squarely on the treads. The catch is width. There is often just enough room for one person to pass, so the access kit has to be set up to leave a route up and down, and moved as the work goes along.
The equipment we use and how the stairwell is made safe are explained on our main hallway, stairs and landing decorating page. Here we look at what Delapre houses add to that.
When the hall is the only way in
Mid-terrace houses in Delapre have no side access to the back garden. Everything that comes in or out of the house, from shopping to bins in some cases, passes through the hallway. For decorating, that has two consequences:
- The hall is usually decorated last in a whole-house job, after other rooms are finished and materials are no longer being carried through.
- Floors, the bottom of the stair stringer and the newel post need firm protection, because they will be walked past every day the work runs.
We plan the order with you at the start so the house stays usable and nobody has to climb over dust sheets to get to work.
Finishes for a hallway that takes a battering
HMO Article 4 directions from 2017-2018 cover parts of Delapre, and the Waterside Campus halls are a short walk north. Some houses here are shared lets, where several adults use one narrow hallway. Family homes with pushchairs and bikes give the walls a similar knock. In those halls we steer people towards:
| Surface | Finish that copes |
|---|---|
| Walls at hand and shoulder height | Scrubbable or durable matt, which can be wiped without polishing up |
| Lower wall below a dado or picture rail | Eggshell, or a darker colour that hides scuffs |
| Spindles, handrail and newel | Hard-wearing satin; water-based if you want it to stay white |
| Stair stringer and skirting | Satin or eggshell, with a robust undercoat |
Lighter colours help in a narrow interwar hall, especially a mid-terrace one with no side window. A soft off-white above a mid-tone lower wall gives a brighter feel while keeping marks less obvious where hands and bags touch.
Cold walls and the front of the house
Delapre’s terraces are mostly solid brick, uninsulated as built. The front wall of the hall is an outside wall, and on the stairs the landing often has another. Those surfaces run colder than the party wall, so condensation and faint mould can appear in the corner behind the front door or around the landing window. Before decorating we clean and treat any of that, and use a stain-blocking primer so it does not ghost through the new colour. If damp is coming through the brickwork itself, from failed pointing or a leaking gutter, we will say so, because no paint will hold on a wall that keeps getting wet.
Where a house carries the external insulation recorded at some addresses on Forest Road, Eastfield Road and Queen Eleanor Road, the hall tends to stay warmer and drier. It is one of the reasons we look at the house in person before pricing.
Picture rails and dado lines on the stairs
Many 1930s hallways kept a picture rail running into the stairwell, and some have a dado. These give natural break lines for a two-colour scheme and make cutting in on a tall stairwell wall much neater. If a rail has been removed and the line patched, we can fill and sand it out or refit a new length, depending on what you want. For pricing guidance see the cost guide, and for other services in the area, our Delapre page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
