DH Painter & Decorator paints internal doors, frames, skirtings and architraves in Hanslope, MK19, travelling about 8.9 miles south from our Northampton base. Dean prepares and finishes each type of joinery the village has, from old cottage boards to new-build MDF.
Woodwork from four centuries
Woodwork in Hanslope falls into three broad groups, and each one asks for a different approach. The historic core around Market Square, the High Street and the main street has houses and cottages going back to the 17th century, built in yellow oolitic limestone, with Maltings Farmhouse dated 1624. Ringing that core are houses put up in the 1960s, when the Hesketh estate released land: Western Drive, St James Close and Eastfield Drive. Beyond them, several hundred newer houses now stand on the recent developments, Hayfield and The Wheatfields among them. A door in each of those places has a different history under its paint, so the preparation is different too. Our main woodwork painting page explains our general method. This page is about what that method means in Hanslope.
Ledged doors and uneven boards in the stone cottages
Period cottages in the village tend to have ledged plank doors and old timber that has been painted many times over. Layers of gloss build up in the gaps between boards and around the ledges, and old coatings on joinery of this age may contain lead. We test before sanding, and where lead is present we use wet abrading and careful clean-up rather than dry power sanding. On boarded doors we brush paint along each plank so that it follows the grain, and we keep the gaps clear so the door still reads as boards rather than a flat slab.
Skirtings in these houses rarely sit on a straight wall. Solid limestone walls with lime plaster move and bow, so a skirting can have gaps that change along its length. Rigid caulk tends to crack away on a wall like that. We use a flexible filler sparingly and accept a little character where forcing a straight line would look wrong. Where a house is one of the village’s 31 listed buildings, repainting joinery in its existing colour and finish is the safe course. Altering historic features may need consent from Milton Keynes City Council, so we raise that before work starts.
Sixty-year-old woodwork on Western Drive and its neighbours
Western Drive, St James Close and Eastfield Drive were built in buff brick during the 1960s, so their joinery has had six decades of use. Original internal doors and softwood skirtings that have survived usually carry decades of oil-based gloss that has yellowed, chipped on the edges and cracked at the joints. Painting straight over that gives a poor result. Our usual sequence is:
- degrease door edges and push plates, where hands have left years of grime
- scrape back loose or crazed gloss and feather the edges so they do not show through
- key the remaining sound gloss and spot-prime any bare timber
- refill old nail and screw holes left from previous fittings, then caulk the skirting-to-wall joint
- finish in a waterborne satin or eggshell, which stays whiter for longer than traditional gloss
Where original flush doors have been swapped piecemeal for panelled ones, a single landing can end up with two or three styles, and painting them all one colour ties it back together.
Factory-primed doors on the newest estates
On the recent estates the joinery is usually machined MDF skirting and pre-primed doors with a thin builder’s finish coat. It is sound but plain, and it marks quickly once furniture goes in. The work here is lighter on stripping and heavier on detail: filling gaps where skirting has pulled away as the new walls dried, sanding back runs at the door edges, and laying off two proper finish coats. If a new house also needs the walls doing, we can combine both, and the Hanslope area page lists everything else we cover in the village.
Booking woodwork painting in Hanslope
Hanslope sits in Milton Keynes but only 8.9 miles south of Northampton, and we reach it by the roads around Salcey Forest. Long Street Road, Gold Street and Park Road fill with commuter traffic morning and evening, so we plan arrival times around it. Most homes in the conservation area have off-road parking, which makes it easy to set up a sanding and cutting area outside. For a rough idea of what affects the cost of a woodwork job, see our painter and decorator cost guide, then call Dean on 07539 779 036 for a written quote.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
