DH Painter & Decorator takes on commercial painting in St James, Northampton NN5, from industrial units on St James Mill Road and Millbrook Close to shops on Weedon Road and St James Road. Dean is based in Northampton, about 0.6 miles away, and provides free quotes.
A district that still makes things
St James grew up around shoe factories, a tannery, saw mills and engineering, and it still has working industry. Church’s, founded in 1873, makes shoes in a factory on St James Road that was formerly Padmore & Barnes’ Moccasin Works. The St James Industrial Estate on St James Mill Road includes Cosworth’s headquarters alongside warehouse units, and St James Mill Business Park on Millbrook Close is made up of steel portal frame units with half-height brick and profile cladding. Add the shops on the main roads, the retail park east of the railway and the hospitality and catering spaces at Franklin’s Gardens and Sixfields, and the commercial work here covers a wide range.
| Premises | Typical surfaces | Main consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Units on Millbrook Close and St James Mill Road | Profile steel cladding, brick lower walls, steel doors | Industrial-grade coatings, work around operations |
| Shops on St James Road, Weedon Road, Harlestone Road | Shop interiors, fascias, rendered or brick fronts | Traffic grime, trading hours |
| Stadium hospitality and catering | Function rooms, corridors, kitchens | Event calendar, hygiene-rated finishes |
| Offices and community buildings | Plastered walls, timber joinery | Occupied buildings, phased rooms |
Cladding and brick on the business parks
Profile cladding on a portal frame unit fails in predictable places: cut edges and laps, where corrosion creeps under the original coating, and the lower sheets just above the brickwork, where splashback and vehicle damage start. Repainting means cleaning off chalked coating, treating edge corrosion, priming bare steel and using a coating system made for coated cladding, not a general masonry paint. The half-height brick below needs a breathable masonry paint if it has been painted before, or is usually left as bare brick if it has never been painted, since a first coat commits the owner to repainting it for good. Inside, we can work area by area so a warehouse or workshop keeps running, with the order of work agreed with the site in advance.
Shops in an Air Quality Management Area
Weedon Road and St James’ Road have an Air Quality Management Area declared because of nitrogen dioxide from traffic heading to and from M1 junction 16. For a shop, that means front elevations and signage boards pick up a grey film quickly. We wash and degrease before painting and choose finishes that can be wiped down. Shop interiors are planned around trading: one section at a time, and low-odour waterborne paints so shoppers are not walking into a smell of solvent. Our shopfront painting page covers the outside of the shop in more detail.
Match days and heritage buildings
Weedon Road changes character when Franklin’s Gardens or Sixfields has a fixture. Parking is restricted and the road fills up, so ladder work and deliveries on frontages near the grounds are scheduled away from those days. For the hospitality and catering spaces themselves, work naturally fits between events.
St James has no conservation area, so most commercial owners can choose their own exterior colours. Listed buildings are the exception. The 1930s transport office at the former tram depot is Grade II listed and is to be kept in the redevelopment, and listed building consent can be needed for changes to the appearance of a listed building, including repainting in a new colour. We will tell you if a building needs checking before we quote. Occupied buildings on St James Road, such as the Doddridge Centre, built in 1895 as the Doddridge Memorial Chapel and now a community centre, are the kind of premises where work is phased room by room around the people using them.
Read about our general approach on the commercial painting service page, or see the St James area page for other services.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
