DH Painter & Decorator decorates hallways, stairs and landings in Stoke Bruerne, about 6.6 miles south of Northampton. Dean plans access to suit each staircase, from steep cottage stairs on solid stone walls to tall stairwells that need a scaffold tower, and picks paint to suit old or modern walls.
A village of very different staircases
There is no standard hallway in Stoke Bruerne. Old Dower House on the green, dated 1636, is a lobby-entry house. In that plan you step into a small lobby against the chimney stack, and the stair is usually tight and steep, tucked in beside it. Other 17th- and 18th-century cottages in the village can have similarly cramped stairs, with narrow stairs, low ceilings at the turn and very little room to stand a ladder.
At the other end of the scale, Rookery House and Bruerne House are three storeys high. Houses like these have tall stairwells where the top wall can’t be reached from a stepladder or even a normal stair platform. The converted barns at Rookery Farm and the modern houses on Wentworth Way and Chapel Lane have more ordinary stairs, though some barn conversions have open, double-height spaces.
How we set up stair ladders, platforms and staging generally is covered on the main hallway, stairs and landing decorating page. Here is how it applies to houses in this village.
Access by type of house
| Type of house | Typical stair | How we reach it |
|---|---|---|
| 17th- and 18th-century cottage | Steep, narrow, often turning, low headroom | Short combination ladder and small hop-up; one section at a time |
| Three-storey house | Tall open stairwell over two or more flights | Scaffold tower or stair-specific staging, built inside |
| Barn conversion | Open tread or double-height hall | Podium or tower on the ground floor, boarded over finished floors |
| Modern infill or estate house | Straight flight, standard landing | Stair platform and staging boards |
A tower has to come in through the front door. Many plots on the Lanes have no rear access, and the double yellow lines mean we can’t leave the van on the lane while we unload. We bring the sections in by hand and protect the hall floor, the stair treads and any stone flags before the tower goes up.
Old walls on the stair
In the stone cottages the stair wall is often solid limestone rubble with lime plaster on it. These walls need to breathe. Seal them with a vinyl emulsion and you can get damp patches and flaking paint, often on the coldest outside wall of the stair. We use breathable paints there and fill cracks in lime plaster with compatible materials, so the repair moves with the wall rather than cracking free.
The handrail and spindles in an old cottage usually carry many coats of paint, sometimes with dents and worn patches where hands have rubbed for decades. We key and fill them by hand. On a steep narrow stair we keep one side clear to walk on while the other side dries, so you can still get up to bed.
Tall stairwells and modern hallways
In a three-storey house such as Rookery House or Bruerne House, the stairwell takes more planning than painting. The wall over the lower flight, the landing ceilings and the highest part of the well each need the tower moved and rebuilt. We work from the top down so drips and dust never land on finished work below.
The modern houses in the village, and most of the infill to the south-west, have plasterboard or gypsum-skimmed hallways. Those take a standard wipeable emulsion and satinwood or eggshell on the woodwork. In a busy family hall, a scrubbable finish on the lower walls is worth it, because muddy boots after a walk along the towpath or round the Brick Pits nature reserve will mark the walls.
Our Stoke Bruerne page covers the village as a whole. If you are comparing quotes, our guide on how to choose a painter and decorator has questions worth asking.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
