DH Painter & Decorator paints fascias, soffits and bargeboards in Upton NN5, about 2.1 miles west of Northampton town centre. Many Upton roofs sit three storeys up with deep eaves, so Dean plans the access first, then checks whether the boards are timber or uPVC before choosing a finish.
High, deep and in the sun
Roofline work in Upton is mostly a question of height. Of the buildings mapped with a storey count, about 105 are three storeys and a handful reach four or five. The villas on Site C off West Street have 45-degree pitched roofs and deliberately deep eaves, and the three- and four-storey villas around that scheme’s edge put their fascias well past comfortable ladder reach. Deep eaves also mean a wide soffit, so there is more board to prepare per metre of roofline than on an ordinary semi.
Where rows face south across Upton Country Park, fascias take sun for most of the day. Gloss on a sunny fascia chalks and fades sooner than on a north-facing one, and dark colours heat up and move more, so we use a UV-stable exterior system on those elevations.
Timber or plastic? Check first
Upton homes date from 2005 onwards, so roofline boards are roughly ten to twenty years old. Some are timber with a builder’s finish now due its first repaint. Others may be uPVC, which needs no paint for protection and only takes paint over a primer made for plastics. Dean checks which you have before quoting. On timber, a microporous finish suits deep-eave soffits well, because it lets moisture out of the wood instead of trapping it under a skin of gloss.
On timber boards we:
- wash off grime and green growth, especially on shaded rear eaves near the woods and swales;
- scrape and sand loose areas and prime bare wood;
- probe joints and the bottom edge of each fascia for soft spots;
- apply two coats of a microporous or exterior gloss system matched to the exposure.
Green roofs, terraces and parapets
Some of the award-winning Upton homes have flat green roofs, roof terraces and parapets. Planting and standing water close to fascias and timber edges keep those boards wetter than a fascia under a pitched tile roof. If a board has started to rot, painting over it only hides the problem. We look closely at timber beside any green roof or terrace and tell you if a section needs a carpenter before we paint. Roof windows and glazed gables on the same houses sit right next to the boards, so they are masked carefully.
Getting a tower onto a mews
Upton’s living streets are narrow. Knot Tiers Mews, Strobel Mews and Ashby Wood Mews, for example, are shared with people on foot, and the flats sit around parking courts such as Ashby, Salcey and Brixworth Courts, where the van shares bays with residents. A tower for a three-storey fascia takes up room and has to stay put for the length of the job. Before we start we agree:
- where the tower stands and for how many days;
- where the van parks without taking a resident’s bay;
- which neighbours need a word so nobody is boxed in.
The Site C garages with rooms above have their own short fascias, and these are often easier to reach from the central mews behind.
Gutters and the swales below
Upton’s sustainable drainage uses swales to hold back storm water, so whatever goes into a gutter or gully can end up in those green channels. We sheet below the work, collect scrapings and paint debris, and keep cleaning water out of gutters and gullies so nothing reaches the channels. The general method is on our fascia and soffit painting page, and the full list of local work is on our Upton area page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
