DH Painter & Decorator paints shopfronts and small commercial frontages in Hardingstone, NN4, 1.8 miles south of the town centre. The work takes in the handful of premises on the High Street, the village's two pubs and the converted farm buildings of the Small Business Centre, with the work arranged around your opening hours.
A village centre, not a shopping parade
Hardingstone does not have a row of shops. Its commercial frontages are spread along the High Street: the Londis convenience shop, the post office, a corner shop and several hairdressers, along with two pubs, The Crown and The Sun. Each is a different kind of building. The Londis is a modern building that sits inside the conservation area. The Crown is a 1930s pub building set back from the road. The rest sit along the High Street among the village’s houses.
That variety means there is no standard shopfront specification here. Modern shop joinery and fascia boards need a durable exterior system that copes with constant handling around the door. Older timber frontages need slower preparation, filling and priming before any colour goes on. We look at each one before quoting, and we only price what the frontage actually needs. Where a fascia board carries painted lettering, we cut in around it or leave it for a signwriter, rather than painting over your name.
Fitting in with the conservation area
These premises sit in or beside the Hardingstone Conservation Area, whose character comes from brown ironstone, pale limestone and red brick. A repaint in the existing colours is straightforward. A new colour scheme, particularly a bright corporate one, deserves a conversation with West Northamptonshire Council first, and any change to a listed building needs consent. New or altered signage can also have its own rules, so check before ordering lettering.
In practice, muted heritage shades on doors, frames and fascias tend to sit comfortably with the surrounding buildings, and we can suggest colours that keep your branding clear without jarring with the street.
Painting around customers on a tight High Street
The High Street is narrow in places, with little or no footway between the church and Coldstream Lane, parked cars along the eastern end, double yellow lines in the core and overhead power lines along it. A shopfront job here has to keep the door open, the pavement passable and the cables well clear. We agree working times with you before we start, so the noisy or messy stages avoid your busiest hours. The entrance door is usually done in one session with quick-drying paint, so customers can get in for the rest of the day. Barriers and wet paint signs stay out whenever we are working at pavement level.
For hairdressers, where customers sit close to the door for long periods, we use low-odour waterborne paints on anything facing indoors and keep doors propped only when needed.
The Small Business Centre and Brackmills
The Small Business Centre, a set of converted farm buildings and an old garage on the High Street, is also within the conservation area. Its timber doors and joinery need the same careful approach as the older shopfronts, worked around the tenants who use the site each day. Large boarded doors on old farm buildings take a lot of weather, so we check bottom rails and ledges for soft timber before quoting. To the north-east, part of the Brackmills Industrial Estate lies within the parish, including large warehouse units. That is a very different scale of job, and it is covered by our commercial painting service.
For our general approach to frontages, see the main shopfront painting page, and our Hardingstone area page explains how the village’s buildings vary.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
