DH Painter & Decorator applies mist coats and decorates new plaster in St James, Northampton NN5, including rear extensions to Victorian terraces and rooms replastered after damp. Dean covers St James from our Northampton base, about 0.6 miles away across the River Nene, with free quotes.
Where new plaster comes from in Jimmy’s End
In St James, fresh plaster mostly turns up in three ways. The first is the rear extension. Victorian terraces built for shoe and engineering workers have small rooms, and pushing out the back kitchen is the obvious way to gain space, so the new room arrives with bare skim on every wall and ceiling. The second is replastering after damp, which ties back to where the lower streets sit. The third is still to come: West Northamptonshire Council bought the old St James tram and bus depot in 2023 and plans housing there, somewhere between 70 and 91 homes, and new homes mean plaster that needs a first decoration.
Each of those needs a slightly different start, which is why we ask how the plaster got there before we say how to paint it.
Replastered walls on the floodplain streets
Low-lying parts of St James Road, Harlestone Road and Weedon Road are in the River Nene floodplain. Residents were evacuated in the Good Friday flood of April 1998, and while the banks have since been raised, ground floors in some older houses still carry damp and salts in the walls. When those walls are hacked off and replastered, the new surface can look perfect and still be wet behind. Salts can also work through and bloom on the face over the following weeks.
- We take moisture readings across the wall, not just in one spot, before any paint goes on.
- Any white salt bloom is brushed off dry and left to see if more comes through.
- Where the wall is still drying, we use a breathable paint so the moisture can escape rather than pushing the finish off.
- Vinyl and sheen finishes stay off those walls until they are properly dry.
If the replaster was done with a specialist damp system, we follow whatever that system says about decoration, because the wrong paint can affect it.
A terrace extension from bare skim to finished room
A rear extension in a terrace street is usually small enough to finish quickly, and that is the trap. The skim on the walls and ceiling goes pale and even as it dries, but a cold back extension with a new concrete floor can hold moisture for weeks, especially through a Northampton winter. Paint it too soon with an ordinary emulsion and it will peel in sheets.
Once the plaster is dry we apply a mist coat, a thinned trade emulsion that soaks in and gives the next coats something to grip, and then two full coats. Joins between the new extension and the old house need attention: the old Victorian plaster and the new skim take paint differently, and the crack line at the junction often reappears unless it is cut out and filled with a flexible filler before the top coats.
Where a terrace has no rear access, extension work in St James is reached through the house. We keep our gear in the new room and sheet the route through.
Read more before you book
Our guide to mist coats on new plaster covers drying times and mixes in more detail, and the main new plaster and extension painting service page sets out how we work. For other services in the area, see our St James page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
