DH Painter & Decorator paints house exteriors in Headlands, the interwar NN3 suburb about 2.2 miles north-east of Northampton town centre. Dean quotes for bay joinery, bargeboards, front doors, garages and masonry on the semis and bungalows between Wellingborough Road and Booth Lane.
A suburb built around 1939
Walk the spine road from Wellingborough Road up towards Booth Lane and and most of the fronts you pass are semis, with 1939 the most common build year on the street-level data. Most exterior jobs in the district start from the same kind of building: a brick interwar semi, often with a bay on the ground floor and another directly above it, a driveway, and a garage built on later. That shared starting point is useful, because it tells us where the weather does its damage before we arrive.
On a double-bay front the weak spots are high up and narrow. The first-floor bay frame, its sill and the small timber roof over the bay take rain from three sides, and the bay-top boards are often the first thing to open up at the joints. Ground-floor bays are easier to reach but collect splashback from paths and drives. A full exterior here normally means:
- both bay frames, sills and the bay-roof timbers, reached by ladder or a small tower for the upper one
- bargeboards and the eaves run along the main roof
- the front door and its frame, often the one original piece of timber left at the front
- garage doors and the brick or rendered faces of later extensions
When the windows are already plastic
Agent listings for Headlands homes regularly mention uPVC double glazing, and where the original timber casements have gone, the painting list gets shorter but does not disappear. Fascias, soffits and bay-top boards may still be timber behind plastic windows, and the front door frequently is too. uPVC itself only takes a specialist coating system, so if you want white frames turned grey or black we will talk you through what that involves rather than reaching for ordinary gloss. Mixed fronts, with some timber and some plastic, are common on these roads and we price each surface on its own.
Two households, one elevation
Seen from the pavement, a pair of semis reads as one building. Nothing on this estate is covered by conservation controls, so you are free to change the colour of your front door, trim or painted masonry. The question is how your half will look next to the attached house. If next door has kept white bargeboards and a cream bay, a dark trim on your side can look like a mistake rather than a choice. Neighbours can agree a shared scheme and have both halves done in one visit, which also means only one setup of ladders and dust sheets on the shared boundary. If you would like a second opinion before choosing, our colour advice is available as part of the quote.
One caveat for houses at the southern tip: the designated area around Abington Park lies on the opposite side of the A4500. Headlands streets are not recorded inside it, but anyone unsure whether their frontage is affected can confirm with West Northamptonshire Council before choosing a new colour.
Getting set up on a Headlands drive
Most semis here have side access and a block-paved driveway, so ladders, a tower and materials can go straight round to the rear elevation without coming through the house, and there is usually room to park the van off the road. The odd ones out are the handful of terraced houses in the middle of a row, where a side path may not exist; for those we agree the route to the back garden at the quote. Near the northern end, where the academy and college traffic builds up twice a day, we arrive mid-morning once the roads have quietened.
Timing matters more than location for exterior paint. Any front that sees little direct sun dries slowly in spring and autumn, and our guide to when to schedule exterior painting explains why we watch dew points as well as rain. The full preparation and product detail is on our main exterior painting page, and the wider picture of decorating in this suburb is on our Headlands area page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
