We paint commercial and community premises in Rectory Farm, NN3, about 4.2 miles north-east of Northampton town centre. The estate has no high street or business park. Its commercial buildings are a small group around the Olden Road local centre, so jobs are small and planned around trading and school hours.
A small, clustered set of premises
Rectory Farm was laid out as a residential New Town estate, and its non-domestic buildings sit together in one spot. The Olden Road local centre has a Co-op Food and Rectory Farm Supermarket, with the community centre, Daisy Chain Pre-School and Rectory Farm Primary School next to them. The Church of Christ Christian Fellowship Centre stands on Shadowfax Drive, on the western edge of the estate. There is no business park and no parade of offices. Blackthorn’s Bridge Court centre to the south-west is a separate estate centre.
So commercial painting here usually means one building and one manager, with neighbours on every side. The work is mostly sales floors and stockrooms, a hall or meeting room, a toilet block, an entrance lobby, and outside timber or metal such as doors, frames, fascia boards and shutters.
Fitting round the 20 mph stretch and the school day
Olden Road is a 20 mph street past the school and shops, and morning and afternoon school traffic fills the local centre. That affects two things. Deliveries of materials and the arrival of access equipment are timed to avoid drop-off and pick-up. Exterior work on a shop front or community building entrance is planned for when fewest people are walking past, so ladders and wet paint are not beside a queue of parents and pushchairs.
For a shop, that usually means interior work done area by area in the quieter parts of the trading day, so the shop can keep trading. For a community hall, it means working around the booking diary. We ask for the calendar at the start and plan around regular groups instead of asking them to move.
Premises that share walls with homes
Rectory Farm Supermarket has a flat on the top floor above it, and the whole centre is surrounded by houses. Smell and noise therefore matter more than they would on a trading estate. We use low-odour water-based paints indoors wherever the surface allows, keep sanding dust contained, and avoid the noisiest preparation early in the morning or late in the evening. If a residential stair or entrance is part of the job, we agree access with the occupant in advance.
Finishes for busy, shared floors
A community centre or pre-school takes more wear than a home, with chairs against walls, small hands on door frames and constant cleaning. The specification usually includes:
- Scrubbable, high-durability emulsion on walls and corridors, so they can be wiped down without the finish polishing up.
- Water-based satin or eggshell on doors and frames, which dries quickly enough for rooms to reopen the next day.
- Anti-mould paint in kitchens and toilets that run all day.
- Metal primers and topcoats for roller shutters, handrails and steel door frames outside.
Rectory Farm’s buildings date from the 1970s onwards, with no conservation area or heritage restrictions in the sources we checked. Colour choice for an exterior is therefore up to the owner or landlord, not a planning decision. If you lease your unit, check your agreement for any rules on signage colours.
We are fully insured and can supply method statements and risk assessments if your organisation needs them. More about scheduling and commercial finishes is on our main commercial painting page, and the estate as a whole is covered on our Rectory Farm area page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
