DH Painter & Decorator paints doors, skirtings, frames and other interior and exterior woodwork in Kingsthorpe, NN2, which starts roughly 1.8 miles up Harborough Road from the town centre. Dean handles everything from 17th-century cottage joinery in the conservation area to modern doors in brownfield new builds.
Ledged and braced doors around The Green and Green End
Kingsthorpe’s surviving vernacular cottages, put up in rubble sandstone two to three centuries before the estates, have small openings, timber casements under timber lintels and ledged and braced timber doors. You see them on The Green, Green End, Well Yard and Vicarage Lane, and several are listed, including Kingswell Cottage, Well Yard House and Thornton Cottage at 47 Vicarage Lane.
A ledged and braced door has no panels to hide behind. It is a run of vertical boards held by horizontal ledges and a diagonal brace, and every joint between boards is a place for old paint to bridge, crack and let water in. On these doors we:
- rake old, failed paint out of the board joints so the boards can move without splitting the new coat;
- brush along the grain one board at a time, then do the ledges and braces, so there are no lap marks across the face;
- treat old paint on pre-1960s timber as possibly lead-based and prepare it with wet abrasion rather than dry sanding or burning off.
The 2017 conservation appraisal asks for original timber doors, sashes and casements to be repaired or replaced like for like rather than swapped for something new. Careful preparation and repainting is how an original door is kept in service, and it keeps a cottage on The Green looking the way the appraisal wants it to.
Sashes, fanlights and cast iron on Vicarage Lane and the High Street
The 19th-century red brick houses on Vicarage Lane, Green End, High Street and Manor Road bring a different set of joinery: timber sliding sashes, panelled doors and glazed fanlights above them. The early 19th-century three-storey house at 17 Green End, with its multi-pane sashes, is a good example of how much glazing bar there can be on one front.
Sash work is slow. The sashes are painted so they still slide, the meeting rails and glazing bars are cut in by hand, and putty is checked before any paint goes near it. Fanlights over doors get the same treatment at a smaller scale. Because these houses sit at the back of the pavement on a narrow lane, outside joinery is often reached from a short ladder or steps on the footway itself, so we keep the working area tidy and short-lived.
Bungalows, estate houses and Kingsthorpe’s new builds
Away from the old village, woodwork is mostly indoors. The 1930s bungalows on The Green and Knights Lane have multiple casements and bay windows, and inside they have the long skirting runs you get when every room is on one floor. On the 1960s to 1980s estates at Spring Park, Obelisk, Chalcombe Avenue and Hinton Road, a woodwork repaint usually means doors, frames, architraves, skirtings and banisters, often after years of a yellowing gloss that we key and cover with a fresh system.
The newest houses, at Bective Close, Lime Tree Gardens, Scholars Court and on the former university campus, tend to come with factory-primed or factory-finished doors and MDF skirtings. That base coat is not a finished surface. It needs a light key and a proper undercoat and top coat, otherwise the first knock from a hoover shows the primer underneath. For the choice between oil-based and water-based finishes, see our main door, skirting and woodwork painting page.
When woodwork colour needs permission
Repainting joinery in the same colour does not usually need consent. Changing the colour or finish on the outside of a listed building, such as the Grade II cottages on The Green and Green End or the Kingsthorpe Hall flats, can need listed building consent, so that should be checked before work is booked. Unlisted houses in the Kingsthorpe Conservation Area keep normal permitted development rights, because the Article 4 direction considered in 2017 was not pursued. Even so, a colour that suits sandstone and Welsh slate keeps the street looking right.
We cover the old village and every one of its estates from our Northampton base. You can read more about the area on our Kingsthorpe page, and the painter and decorator cost guide explains what affects a woodwork quote.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
