DH Painter & Decorator paints house exteriors across Duston, the NN5 parish on Northampton's western edge. Dean covers it from our Northampton base, about 2.1 miles west of the town centre, and plans each job around the house's age and walls: limewash on the old village cottages, masonry paint on Kerrfield pebbledash and microporous finishes on Newton Road timber.
Six character areas, six different outsides
Duston is not one kind of house. The Duston Neighbourhood Plan, made in 2015, splits the parish outside its conservation area into six character areas, and each one asks something different of an exterior painter. Between the St Luke’s end of Main Road and East Duston you find 17th and 18th-century ironstone cottages, Regency stucco, Victorian brick villas, the brick-and-pebbledash semis of the Kerrfield Estate, the hedged 1950s streets of Limehurst and Eastfield, and finally the 1960s and 70s terraces around Newton Road, clad in timber weatherboarding. Then there are the newer homes on the former British Timken works and the old Ryelands and Millway school sites.
So a quote here starts with a simple question: which Duston are we standing in? The answer decides the products, the preparation and how the day is organised. The general method for walls, woodwork and rooflines is on our exterior painting service page; what follows is what changes in this parish.
The old village around Main Road and Millway
The Duston Conservation Area, designated in March 1977 and redrawn in October 2009, takes in Church Lane, Main Road, Millway, Melbourne Lane and the Saxon Rise junction. It holds 21 listed buildings, among them thatched cottage rows at 7-11 Main Road and 6-10 Millway, and The Cottage on Squirrel Lane, finished in limewashed rubble. Soft local ironstone needs to breathe. An acrylic masonry paint holds moisture in the stone, so where a cottage is already limewashed we renew it with limewash, and where a wall has a mineral finish we keep to a mineral system.
Listed building consent covers changes that affect character, outside as well as in. Like-for-like repainting usually falls outside that, but on a Grade II cottage it is sensible to speak to the conservation officer at West Northamptonshire Council first, and we will tell you plainly if a colour or product change might need it. The 2009 appraisal also values the original sash windows on the Saxon Rise junction houses, so we repair and repaint sashes rather than treat them as worn out.
Interwar and 1950s estates: painting with the street in mind
On the Kerrfield Estate, north-east of Main Road at the Berrywood Road junction, symmetrical semis carry pebbledash under slate roofs with hipped and gabled ends. Limehurst, Eastfield and the Chiltern Way streets are brick, with evenly spaced windows and doors set behind deep front gardens. Policy BE1 of the Neighbourhood Plan treats that regularity as part of the character, so a door, fascia or garage colour chosen to sit with next door keeps that rhythm, while a sharp contrast breaks it.
On the 1950s roads the deep front gardens put the ladder footing inside your boundary rather than on the pavement, and front hedges are sheeted before work starts. Pebbledash is handled separately, with a long-pile roller and a flexible masonry paint; see our render and masonry page for that work.
Newton Road timber and the Radburn layout
East Duston’s Newton Road area, including Clipston Way and Witton Road, was laid out on the Radburn principle: front doors face footpaths and green spaces, cars sit in parking courts at the back. The extensive weatherboarding there wants a microporous stain or paint on a steady cycle. Because the van cannot pull up at the front door, ladders, dust sheets and tins are carried along the footpath from the court, so we agree the route and the start time before the first day.
Traffic, parking and timing
Main Road carries heavy through-traffic, and frontages close to it collect a film of road grime. We wash those walls and woodwork down before any coating goes on and lean towards dirt-resistant exterior finishes. In the Village Centre parking is tight and the roads are narrow; at 26-30 Main Road tall buildings stand close to the highway. With five schools in the parish, school-run traffic adds to the pressure at certain times, so early starts and an agreed place to park save trouble. Our guide to when to book exterior painting in the UK covers the weather side of booking, and our Duston painting and decorating page covers the rest of the parish.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
