DH Painter & Decorator provides decorative finishes in Paulerspury, about 9.8 miles south of Northampton town centre in NN12. In a parish of limestone cottages, converted farmhouses and early 19th-century houses, that mostly means traditional finishes such as limewash and flat chalky paints, plus careful detail work on period joinery.
What decorative work looks like in a village of limestone and thatch
In a newer town house, decorative finishes often means a feature wall or a modern paint effect. In Paulerspury the buildings ask for something older. The parish has 23 listed entries, including 18th-century stone cottages, thatched houses such as The Thatches on Park Lane, a run of farmhouses now used as homes, and early 19th-century houses such as The Hunt House and The Former Rectory. These are buildings where the right decorative finish is usually one with a long history of its own.
Limewash and soft flat paints
Limewash is lime putty thinned with water, sometimes tinted with earth pigments, and built up in several very thin coats. On lime plaster and old stone it does two jobs. It lets the wall breathe, which matters on solid limestone walls over Boulder Clay where damp rises at the base, and it gives a soft, uneven, slightly translucent colour that changes with the light. It is a fitting finish for cottage rooms, cellars, outbuildings and the beamed rooms of converted farmhouses such as Kirby, Manor or Old Home Farmhouse.
Limewash has its demands. It needs a clean, absorbent surface, it will not go over modern acrylic paint, and it must be applied in damp conditions and kept from drying too fast. Where a wall has already had modern paint, a distemper-style flat paint or a mineral paint can give a similar chalky look without stripping back to bare plaster.
Detail on period joinery
The larger houses carry the most joinery worth picking out. 12-pane and 16-pane sashes, panelled doors, shutters and architraves suit an eggshell or traditional oil-based finish, sometimes with mouldings in a second shade. Work of this kind includes:
- picking out panel mouldings on doors and shutters in a slightly deeper or lighter tone
- lining-in skirting tops or dado rails where a room has them
- woodgraining, the old technique of painting softwood to imitate oak or another hardwood, often found under later paint on doors in houses of this age
- keeping glazing bars crisp and paint off the glass and out of sash runners
Graining is slow, hand-built work in a base coat and glaze, combed or brushed to form grain and then varnished. It is worth discussing on doors that would once have been grained, or where you want new joinery to match old.
Listed buildings and decorative changes
On a listed building, consent may be needed for changes that alter its character, inside or out. Replacing limewash with a modern masonry paint, or stripping a historic finish to bare wood, are the sort of changes that can fall into that. Returning to a traditional finish that suits the building is usually easier to support, but it is still worth asking West Northamptonshire Council before any work begins. We are happy to work to any conditions they set.
Fire safety is another point particular to thatched cottages here. We never use heat guns or burners to strip paint on or near a thatched house. Old coatings are removed by hand or with chemical strippers instead.
Next steps
Because the village is spread across Pury End, Plumpton End, Tew’s End and Heathencote, Dean comes out to see the rooms first, tests existing coatings to see what they will accept, and gives a written quote. The main decorative finishes page covers feature walls and paint effects more widely, and our Paulerspury page sets out the building types across the parish.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
