Dean takes on commercial painting in Southfields, on Northampton's north-east edge roughly 4 miles out, and on the Round Spinney Industrial Estate next door. Premises range from a small shop parade and a pub to a care home and steel-clad trade units, and each needs different paints and a different plan for working around the business.
The Farmhill Road parade and Prentice Court
Southfields has no high street. Its trading premises are the Farmhill Road parade, where Southfields Supermarket, Southfield Grill & Pizza and The Gallery share a car park, and the Nisa, Post Office and takeaway at Prentice Court on the southern fringe. Weekly shopping goes to Weston Favell Shopping Centre, the district centre for the eastern estates. These are small units that rely on being open, so a repaint has to be phased: one section of the interior at a time, with sheeted walkways for customers, or the exterior fascia and frontage on a day that suits the business. The shared car park helps, as there is somewhere close to set up a tower and keep the pavement clear.
With no conservation area covering the Farmhill Road parade, a tenant is free to change fascia and door colours to match their branding without a heritage consent. The landlord of the unit may still have a say under the lease, so it is worth checking that before choosing a new colour. Roller shutters on the parade are usually galvanised or painted steel and are treated as metalwork, with the right primer, rather than given a coat of exterior gloss.
A pub interior brings its own demands. Bar areas and corridors take knocks and spills, so we suggest a scrubbable finish on walls and a tough satin on woodwork, and plan the work for the quieter parts of the day you choose.
Care home work: low odour and room by room
Southfields House Care Home sits on Farmhill Road. It is the one premises on the estate where people live around the clock, so the work has to fit their day rather than the other way round. Residents cannot simply leave for the day, so work goes room by room or corridor by corridor, agreed in advance with the manager. We use low-odour, quick-drying waterborne paints, keep wet-paint areas signed and separated, and choose washable finishes that cope with regular cleaning. Handrails and door frames are left usable or done in a way that leaves an alternative route open.
Units on Round Spinney Industrial Estate
Round Spinney adjoins Southfields to the west and was one of the early Northampton Development Corporation estates. Its units, from Bodypower Sports on Gatelodge Close to the Northampton Renal Dialysis Unit on Edgemead Close, are mostly steel-clad or blockwork buildings with metal roller doors, personnel doors and railings. That work is a different job from domestic painting:
- Bare or rusting steel on doors and railings is cleaned back to sound metal and treated with a metal primer before the topcoat.
- Painted blockwork in warehouses and loading areas needs a masonry or block paint that can be cleaned.
- Offices and staff areas inside the units are handled like any commercial interior, with hard-wearing emulsion and minimal downtime.
- Where a site has clinical or controlled areas, we work to the access and hygiene rules the site sets.
Planning a job on the north-east edge
Southfields and Round Spinney are reached from Talavera Way and Billing Lane, which makes for straightforward van access to the parade and the industrial estate. We are fully insured for commercial work and can supply the paperwork your landlord or facilities manager asks for before work starts. How we run commercial jobs in general is on our commercial painting page, while homes on the estate are covered on the Southfields area page. If you are comparing contractors, our guide to choosing a painter and decorator sets out what to ask for.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
