Dean paints shopfronts and commercial frontages in Hartwell, NN7, a village about 6.5 miles south of Northampton town centre. Hartwell has only a handful of frontages, including the village shop, the Rose and Crown pub and the Hartwell Club, so the work is small-scale signboard and joinery repainting.
A village with a handful of frontages
Hartwell is not a high-street village. Its frontages are few: the village shop, the Rose and Crown, the Hartwell Club and the community centre that opened in 1991. The two sawmills closed in 1963 and 1982, and it is not clear whether the old timber and coal merchant still has premises. That means shopfront work here is about a few individual buildings, each with its own character, rather than a row of matching units.
For these premises, a repaint usually covers the fascia or signboard, window frames and glazing bars, entrance doors, any stallriser below the window and the surrounding timber or render. Larger jobs that take in the interior, such as a bar room or a club hall, come under our commercial painting service.
Working around a pub, club or shop’s hours
A village shop or pub cannot close for a week while its frontage is painted. Before starting we agree working times with the owner or manager:
- Noisy or messy preparation is done at the quietest times, often early in the day for a pub and outside the busiest hours for a shop.
- Entrances are painted first or last in the day, so customers can always get in, with wet paint signs where a hand might touch.
- Sign lettering is masked or worked around, and any separate sign-writing is planned with you before painting begins.
- Work areas are tidied and ladders taken down at the end of each session.
Community buildings and the school
Not every frontage in Hartwell is a business. The community centre and the Hartwell Club have entrances, notice boards and timber that face the public in the same way a shop does, and the primary school, opened in 1962 and extended in 1995-6, is a flat-roofed brick building with its own doors and fascias. Work on buildings like these follows the same planning: agreeing times with whoever manages the building, keeping entrances usable and avoiding the hours when the building is busiest. For the school that generally means holiday periods.
Roadside access and a rural setting
Many of Hartwell’s older buildings sit directly on the main road through the village, so ladders need firm footing and an awareness of passing traffic, and pavement areas are kept clear for pedestrians. Being 6.5 miles out with no rail link, Dean drives in with everything needed and plans the job as one block of consecutive days.
The wooded setting matters too. With Salcey Forest on the north-east side of the parish and plenty of trees around, timber fascias and frames on shaded elevations pick up algae and dry slowly. Shaded joinery is washed with a fungicide and left to dry before painting, and exterior work is usually booked for the warmer months.
Keeping the colours right for the village
No conservation area is recorded for Hartwell, but twelve buildings in the parish are listed, and repainting a listed frontage in a new colour may need consent. For most premises the choice is yours, though muted, traditional colours tend to sit well alongside the limestone cottages of Hartwell Green. If you are unsure, Dean can talk through options before work starts.
Our main shopfront painting service covers preparation, paint systems and planning in more detail, and the Hartwell area page covers our other work in the village.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
