DH Painter & Decorator paints shopfronts and business frontages in Guilsborough, the NN6 village about 9.3 miles north-west of Northampton. The village has a handful of premises, including the village shop with Post Office, a pub, a hairdresser and a doctor's surgery with pharmacy. Dean plans each job around opening hours and quotes for free.
A short list of premises
Guilsborough is a village, with a population of 692 at the 2011 Census, not a market town, and its commercial frontages are few. The ones recorded for the village are the village shop with its Post Office, a pub, a hairdresser and a doctor’s surgery with a pharmacy. There is also a fire station and two schools, but those are institutional buildings rather than shopfronts. That small scale shapes this service. Each frontage is a one-off rather than one unit in a parade, and each business serves the whole village, so closing it for a day is a real inconvenience to people who rely on it.
Keeping the shop and Post Office trading
A village shop with a Post Office counter has customers from opening to closing, and for a village 9.3 miles out of Northampton the next nearest Post Office counter is not a short walk away. We split the work so the entrance is never blocked for long. The fascia board, sign panel and upper frames can be prepared and painted first while the door stays clear. The door and the frame around it are done in a short, quiet window agreed with you, with wet paint signs and a clear route in.
Exterior paint needs a dry spell, and a shopfront on the village street also needs the dust kept down. We sand with extraction where we can and clean up at the end of each session, so the pavement outside a food shop stays clean.
The pub, the hairdresser and the surgery
Each of the other premises has a different pattern of quiet hours.
- The pub is quieter in the morning, before it opens. That is the time to paint the front door, windows and any hanging-sign bracket.
- The hairdresser works by appointment, so the owner can usually tell us which day is lightest.
- The surgery and pharmacy must keep a safe, clear entrance for patients at all times. Here we work on one section of the frontage at a time and agree the plan with the practice in advance.
Old buildings behind the signs
The High Street is lined with 17th- to 19th-century houses in lias and brick, and The Sun, a listed late 18th-century brick building, was once a public house. Any business in an older High Street building may have timber sashes, a panelled door or decorative joinery under its current paint, and the stone or brick around it is normally left bare. If the building is listed, a change in colour or a new painted finish may need consent from West Northamptonshire Council, so it is worth checking before you choose a new house colour for the business.
Muted, traditional colours tend to sit well against lias and old brick. A deep green, a dark blue or an off-white with dark lettering will read clearly from the road without clashing with the listed houses on either side. Our colour advice service can help you choose.
What we paint, and what we leave to others
We prepare and paint fascias, window frames, doors, stallrisers and metal brackets. We can mask and paint around existing hand-painted or vinyl lettering, but new signwriting is a separate trade, and we can work around your signwriter’s schedule. The main shopfront painting page explains our preparation and paint systems in more detail, and the Guilsborough area page covers our other work in the village.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
