DH Painter & Decorator paints house exteriors across Kingsthorpe (NN2), whose old core lies about 1.8 miles north of Northampton town centre. Inside the two conservation areas the work is mostly joinery, doors and ironwork on stone that stays bare; on the post-war estates it is a conventional full repaint.
Stone village or post-war estate?
Kingsthorpe gives two quite different outside jobs under one NN2 postcode. The old core around The Green, Green End, Vicarage Lane and Kingswell Road is a conservation area first designated in 1970, and the High Street and Manor Road have their own, designated in 1987. Here the houses are mostly light brown Northampton sandstone in coursed rubble, or 19th-century red brick, and the council’s 2017 appraisal is clear that painting stone or brick walls is not a traditional finish. North and east of the old village the picture flips. Chalcombe Avenue and Hinton Road came in the 1960s, Spring Park and Obelisk in the late 1960s and 1970s, Tollgate Close, Brampton Park and Cedrus Court in the 1980s. Those houses get the whole outside done in one visit.
So the first question Dean asks about a Kingsthorpe exterior is which side of that line the house falls on. It decides what gets painted, which products go on, and whether listed building consent comes into it.
What actually gets a brush in the conservation areas
On a cottage by The Green, the paint goes on the timber and metal, not the walls. The typical list looks like this:
- Early timber casements under timber lintels, small openings that need patient prep and filling rather than a quick scuff and gloss. The appraisal prefers repairing original joinery to replacing it, so sound old frames are kept.
- Ledged and braced doors on the 17th and 18th-century cottages, with plenty of edges and boards to cut in.
- Timber sliding sashes on the Vicarage Lane terraces and the three-storey house at 17 Green End, where the sashes are eased so they still run once painted and the old glass is protected.
- Panelled doors with glazed fanlights on the Victorian houses along High Street and Manor Road.
- Cast iron gutters on brackets and any railings, which the council wants kept black.
Several homes here are listed, including Kingswell Cottage, Well Yard House and cottages on Green End and Vicarage Lane. Changing the finish or colour on a listed building needs consent, so on those we repaint like for like unless the owner already has approval. Paint on old joinery is likely to contain lead if it predates the 1960s, so it is wet-sanded or scraped, never dry-sanded into dust.
Full repaints on the 1960s to 1980s estates
The estates are where most Kingsthorpe exterior work sits. A typical visit covers fascias and soffits, front and back doors, any rendered panels, garage doors and the garden fence, all prepared and painted as one job so the colours match and the house is scaffolded or laddered only once. We check every board for soft timber before painting rather than sealing rot in. The 1930s bungalows along The Green into Knights Lane sit in between: plain, uniform rows where the joinery colour should match the neighbours, so the row still reads as one design.
Our main exterior painting page explains the prep and products surface by surface.
Ground that stays wet, and roads that are busy
The village core falls fairly steeply west towards the Brampton arm of the Nene, and water comes out of the hillside in several places, the Kings Well on The Green among them. Combined with the mature limes, birches and horse chestnuts on The Green, that means some low walls, plinths and back doors stay damp well into the morning. We wait for a settled spell and check timber moisture before painting, which is why spring to early autumn suits the work. Our guide to timing exterior painting explains the temperatures and drying times.
Access needs planning too. Vicarage Lane is narrow, enclosed and not a through road, with houses at the back of the pavement, and Green End is a cul-de-sac with a sharp bend. Ladders go up with a footing and barriers so pedestrians can still pass, and on houses near the A508 and A5199 junction we plan parking before the first day. See the Kingsthorpe area page for the other work we cover here.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
