Dean decorates hallways, staircases and landings in Pitsford, a village 4.7 miles north of Northampton. He covers steep, narrow cottage stairs with lime-plastered walls, tall shared stairwells in subdivided houses such as Middlesex House, and modern hallways on the village estates.
Steep stairs in a solid stone cottage
Many of Pitsford’s oldest homes are two-storey farmhouses and cottages of the 17th to early 19th century, built in local Pendle stone with walls far thicker than a modern cavity wall. Their staircases tend to be steep and narrow, squeezed between solid stone walls, often with a turn near the top and very little landing space. Decorating one is mostly a question of where to stand. A standard stepladder rarely fits on a narrow flight, and the head-height wall over the turn is out of reach from the treads.
For these, Dean uses a combination ladder whose legs set independently on different treads, short staging boards where the width allows, and a small platform on the landing. Every set-up is checked before anyone works from it. The stairs stay passable at the end of each day, which matters in a cottage with only one way up. Our main hallway, stairs and landing decorating page explains the equipment and the order of work in more detail.
Old lime plaster on the stair walls
Stair walls in these houses are commonly lime plaster on stone. That surface needs to breathe, so a heavy vinyl emulsion is the wrong choice: it can trap moisture in the wall and start to blister or flake. We use a breathable emulsion or a mineral paint, and fill cracks with a compatible soft filler instead of hard gypsum, which tends to shear away from old lime.
Hand-rails and spindles in these houses have usually been painted many times. Built-up layers are sanded back where they have gone lumpy, and any loose old paint is tested and handled with care, since early coatings on old joinery can contain lead. Wall and ceiling junctions in old houses are rarely straight, so cutting in follows the line of the plaster rather than forcing a ruled edge that would make the wall look more crooked.
Shared stairwells in Pitsford House and Middlesex House
Some of the village’s larger houses are now split into several homes. Pitsford House, an 18th or early 19th century house in dressed stone set in tree-filled grounds, has been subdivided, and so has Middlesex House, built in 1910. Those buildings have bigger stairwells and shared halls than any cottage, and decorating them raises two practical questions.
- Height. A taller stairwell may need a stair platform or a tower configured for steps, rather than ladders alone.
- Who decides. Communal areas belong to more than one household, so colour, timing and access need agreeing between owners, or through whoever manages the building, before we start.
We can quote on the shared areas as one job and work around residents who still need to get in and out each day.
Hallways on the estates, and getting the gear in
Hallways in the post-war and modern houses on Drummond Close, Broadlands and Glebe Lane are a different job: plasterboard walls, standard-width stairs and modern spindles. They are quicker to set up and suit a scrubbable matt or eggshell that copes with bags, bikes and muddy boots.
Access to the house matters more in the old core. Many historic front doors open almost straight onto the road, with little or no front garden. Manor Road is very narrow in places, and parts of Manor Road, Grange Lane and Moulton Road have no pavement, so ladders, boards and dust sheets are carried in quickly and kept tidy rather than laid out on the verge. We cover Pitsford from our Northampton base; the Pitsford area page has more on how we work in the village.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
