Dean paints interiors across Ecton Brook, the Development Corporation estate in NN3 5 about 4.1 miles east of Northampton town centre. Most jobs are whole-house repaints of compact terraced homes, turnarounds between lets, or first decoration of newer houses on the estate's infill sites.
What a Development Corporation house is like inside
Ecton Brook was built from scratch by the Northampton Development Corporation in the late 1970s and 1980s. The RIBA image library holds a 1979 picture of its first phase. Most homes are terraced or end-of-terrace houses grouped around pedestrian squares such as Foxendale Square, Snowbell Square and Lockcroft Square, with flats and maisonettes mixed in. Rooms are compact and ceilings are a standard height. So interior work here is rarely restoration. It is usually a full repaint after a purchase, a refresh after years of family life, or a turnaround between tenants.
Because no single room takes long, one booking often covers the whole house. We normally do the ground floor first, so the kitchen and living room are back in use while the bedrooms are painted. The detached and link-detached houses on Riverwell, Parkside and Raisins Field Close have more rooms, and larger ones, so there the work is more often split into stages.
Forty-odd years of filling, overpainting and DIY
A house of this age has usually had several owners or tenants, and the estate itself began as public housing. Each occupier leaves a layer behind. Before quoting, we look for:
- silk emulsion under matt, or the other way round, which needs keying before a new coat will bond;
- holes from curtain poles, shelves and TV brackets, filled proud and never sanded flush;
- cracks along ceiling joints and around door linings, which are raked out and filled rather than painted over;
- plain softwood skirtings and flush or panel doors carrying several coats of old gloss, which are sanded and primed before a satin finish.
The hallway takes most of the punishment. In the terraced houses the stairs rise straight from the front door, so the narrow wall beside them gets knocked by bags, bikes and pushchairs. A scrubbable matt or eggshell suits that wall, and the hall can be done as a job on its own if the rest of the house is fine.
Carrying the job in from shared parking
Many front doors in the squares open onto a footpath or green, not a road. Dust sheets, steps, boards and paint all have to come in on foot from the shared parking, where van space can be tight. We plan the day to cut down trips: everything comes in first thing and the waste goes out together at the end. It helps the quote if you tell us where the nearest parking is to your door. Furniture is moved to the middle of each room and covered, because these houses rarely have a spare room big enough to empty into.
Lets, shared houses and brand-new walls
The estate still has a mix of private lets, HMO rooms and housing-provider homes. For landlords, the interior job is usually a quick neutral repaint in a durable, wipeable emulsion. In HMO houses, the shared hall and kitchen need the hardest-wearing finish in the property.
Newer homes need a different start. Houses on the former Ecton Brook Playing Fields off Great Billing Way came through planning permission N/2015/1249, and the council’s 18 affordable homes on the former care home site are due in spring 2027. Bare plaster in homes like these, and in extensions on the larger plots, needs a thinned mist coat before any colour goes on. Our mist coat guide explains why. A new house is also worth redecorating once its first settling cracks have appeared.
Our main interior painting service covers how we prepare and paint any room. For outside work and the rest of the estate, see our Ecton Brook area page. The estate sits 4.1 miles east of Northampton town centre, an easy run out from where Dean is based.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
