DH Painter & Decorator handles commercial painting in Semilong, NN2, for shops, trade units, offices and guest accommodation. The neighbourhood is 0.8 miles north of the town centre, and Dean prices each job free after seeing the premises.
The kinds of premises in Semilong
Semilong is mainly housing, but it has a working commercial side. The Local Plan Part 2 names Semilong Road a Neighbourhood Centre, and its frontages hold a Co-op, a pharmacy, a laundrette, a bookmaker and a takeaway. Stanley Street has a Nisa Local, Uppingham Street a convenience store, and St Andrews Road a fish bar, an off-licence and a string of motor-trade businesses. The plan area’s business list also includes trade counters around Grafton Street and Francis Street, a guest house on Hester Street and an apartment hotel on Northcote Street.
Each of these needs something different from a painter. A takeaway kitchen needs washable, grease-tolerant walls. A trade counter needs tough paint where pallets and trolleys hit.
The Hester Street guest house and Northcote Street apartment hotel are a different case again. Rooms there are let to short-stay guests, so decorating has to fit between bookings, a few rooms at a time, with paint that has little smell and dries fast enough for the room to be back in use the next day. Corridors and stairs in that kind of building get luggage knocks at skirting height, so the woodwork and lower walls need a harder finish than the bedrooms.
Shops and takeaways on the Neighbourhood Centre
Inside a Semilong Road shop we plan work in sections so it can stay open, or fit it into a day it is closed. Outside, the shopfront, fascia and door take the weather and the knocks from deliveries, so we use hard-wearing exterior finishes. Shopfronts themselves have their own page: shopfront painting.
With traffic cutting through and kerbs lined with cars, the pavement outside these shops is tight. For frontage work we keep ladders tight to the building, cone off the working area and keep the footway passable.
Trade units and motor-trade workshops
The Upper Priory Street industrial estate and Grafton Trade Park on Quorn Way sit within the plan area, alongside tyre, repair and car hire units on St Andrews Road. In these buildings we usually paint:
- Blockwork and plastered walls in offices, counters and toilets, in washable or anti-scuff finishes.
- Steel doors, frames and handrails, after rust treatment and a metal primer.
- Customer areas that need to look clean but stay practical.
We do not paint workshop floors or carry out line marking. Where floor coatings are needed, that goes to a specialist.
Converted houses and offices on Barrack Road
Several of the tall terraces facing Barrack Road from the west, Langham Place among them, now hold offices as well as flats. They are inside the conservation area, so their street fronts fall under its Article 4 controls. Leicester Parade and St Paul’s Terrace are faced in rubble stone with ashlar trims that must stay bare. On these frontages we repaint only existing timber windows, doors and bargeboards, in the colours already there, unless West Northamptonshire Council approves something else. Inside, offices get the same planning as any other workplace, with work arranged around staff hours.
How we schedule commercial jobs here
Barrack Road (A508) is a busy main road with on-street parking on some sections at certain times, and Marriott Street is densely parked. We arrange van access and deliveries before the start date and keep materials inside the premises rather than on the pavement. More on how we plan work for businesses is on our commercial painting page, and other local services are on our Semilong page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
