DH Painter & Decorator paints the outside of homes in Southfields, the NN3 5 estate between Talavera Way and Billing Lane. Dean covers it from our Northampton base, about 4 miles north-east of the town centre, and quotes for cladding, doors, fascias and garden timber after a look at the house.
Brick walls, timber panels: what actually gets painted
An exterior job in Southfields rarely starts with the walls. The EPC register lists the semis on Gallery Close, Little Gull Close, Farmhill Road and Ludlow Close as cavity-wall houses, fully double glazed, and most show fair-faced brick to the street. That brick was never meant to be painted, and uPVC windows need nothing more than a wash. What is left is the timber: front and back doors, door frames, any boarded panels, bargeboards and the garden fences and sheds.
The timber-frame terraces are a different job. Houses on Micklewell Lane and Brackenfield Square appear on the register as “timber frame, as built”, and homes of this construction usually carry timber or tile-hung cladding panels between the windows. Cladding moves with the seasons and needs a microporous exterior wood finish that lets moisture out, not masonry paint and not a thick gloss that will crack along every board edge. Where panels have gone grey and open-grained, we sand, treat any soft spots, and build the finish up in thin coats.
Carrying kit into the pedestrian squares
Much of Southfields was laid out as closes and pedestrian squares: Brackenfield, Barnhill, Foxwell, Moorfield, Saddlers, Tower Field, Merrydale and Long Marsh among them. Plenty of front doors face a footpath with no road outside, so the van parks at the nearest cul-de-sac head and everything comes in on foot. That affects how a job is set up:
- We bring a scaffold tower in sections only where the height needs it; ladders and a stand-off cover most two-storey terraces.
- Paint, sheets and tools go in once in the morning rather than in repeated trips past your neighbours’ doors.
- Footpaths stay open. Ladder bases are kept tight to the wall and nothing is left standing when we step away.
It adds a little time at each end of the day, and we allow for it in the quote rather than rushing the preparation.
Shade, algae and the tree belts
Southfields is threaded with broadleaved woodland belts and open spaces: Pine Ridge, Brittons Drive, Watermeadow Drive and the tree belt along Osmund Drive, plus the Southfields Linear Open Space. Gardens that back onto them get leaf litter in the gutters, long periods of shade and a film of green growth on north-facing timber. Paint laid over live algae lifts within a season or two, so on these plots a fungicidal wash goes on first and is left to work before anything is sanded. On the north edge, where the estate meets farmland towards Overstone and there are ponds in the open space, timber can stay damp well into the morning, which pushes the start time back on cooler days. Our guide to timing exterior painting through the year explains why spring and early autumn suit shaded plots.
Colour choice, and the one thing to check
There is no conservation area in Southfields and no listed building recorded nearby, so there are no Article 4 limits on the colour of your front door, cladding or fascias. If you want a dark door or a painted panel in a stronger shade, that is your call. The exception is shared ownership. A small share of homes here, around 2.7% near Gallery Close, are shared ownership, and a lease can restrict exterior changes. If that applies, it is worth a quick check with the housing provider before choosing a new colour.
How we quote
Dean looks at the house, notes which surfaces are timber, which are uPVC and how the access works, and gives a written quote for the surfaces you want done. The general method for every surface is on our main exterior painting page, and the Southfields area page covers the other work we take on across the estate.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
