DH Painter & Decorator decorates rental homes in Moulton Leys for landlords and letting agents, from a single room touch-up to a full repaint between tenants. The estate is in NN3, about 3.3 miles north-east of Northampton town centre, and we cover it from our Northampton base.
What the HMO rules mean for rentals on this estate
The HMO Article 4 directions, read together, cover the whole of the former Northampton borough, and Moulton Leys falls inside it. In practice that means turning a family house into a small house in multiple occupation needs planning permission, so lets on the estate are most likely to be ordinary single-household tenancies rather than room-by-room shared houses. That shapes the decorating. A house let to one household gets a full turnaround between tenants rather than constant repairs to individual rooms and shared kitchens.
If you are considering a change of use, check planning first. We decorate what is there and do not advise on HMO licensing. We have not found published figures on how many homes on the estate are let, so we make no assumptions about your street; we simply plan each property on its own walk-round.
A single-household let also means the tenant treats the house as a home: pictures go up, furniture is moved against walls, and children’s bedrooms take the kind of wear an owner-occupied house would. Expect a repaint every few tenancies rather than a light freshen-up each time, and budget for the hall and stairs more often than the bedrooms.
A turnaround repaint in an estate house
The houses on the closes off Manning Road and Underbank Lane have plaster and plasterboard walls, which makes an end-of-tenancy repaint fairly predictable. The usual list on a walk-round is:
- picture hooks, screw plugs and Blu Tack marks to fill and spot-prime;
- fine settlement cracks at ceiling lines and around door frames;
- scuffed hall and stair walls, which take most of the wear in a compact layout;
- kitchen and bathroom ceilings with grease or mould spotting that need washing and a stain-blocking or anti-mould finish;
- marked skirting and doors, refreshed in satin rather than gloss so future touch-ups blend.
We recommend one neutral colour throughout, recorded on your file with its paint code, so the next touch-up between tenants is a quick job rather than a guess. Where a previous tenant has painted a feature wall in a strong colour, allow for an extra coat or a stain-blocking primer to bring it back to the neutral.
Ceilings in the estate houses are plaster or plasterboard, so a water stain from an overflowing bath or a leaking radiator valve shows as a brown ring with a crack along the board joint. Once the leak is fixed and the board has dried, the stain is sealed with a stain-block before the ceiling is repainted, otherwise it bleeds straight through fresh emulsion.
Empty house, keys and a cul-de-sac
Between tenancies the house is usually empty, which makes the work quicker. Keys can be collected from and returned to your letting agent, and we can send photos of the finished rooms for the check-in inventory. Most estate homes sit on cul-de-sac closes with access from one end only, so we park without blocking neighbours’ drives and, near Kings Meadow School, avoid unloading during drop-off and pick-up on the Manning Road side.
The outside of a let
Prospective tenants see the front door and garden first. Because no conservation area covers Moulton Leys, a tired front door can be repainted in whatever colour suits you without heritage consent. Back fences are often shared with several neighbours on these closes, so before we stain a boundary we need to know which side is yours and that the neighbours are happy with the colour. Exterior work is left for settled weather, as the estate’s high ground on the town’s northern edge sees plenty of wind-driven rain.
Our landlord and letting agent decorating service explains how we work with agents across the town, and the Moulton Leys area page sets out the estate’s housing. To budget a void period, see the decorating cost guide.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
