Dean decorates new plaster in Upton, the NN5 neighbourhood about 2.1 miles west of Northampton town centre. That covers loft conversions, garage bonus rooms, extensions and re-skimmed walls on homes built since 2005, starting with a drying check and a mist coat before any colour goes on.
Fresh plaster in a neighbourhood still being built
In Upton, bare plaster is not only an extension job, because building is still going on. The estate has been going up in phases since the 2005 design code, and OpenStreetMap still shows part of West Street under construction. That means a mix of situations: homes only just handed over, homes a few years old that are getting their first alterations, and homes that have reached the age when owners start adding space.
On a recent handover, the walls are usually plasterboard with a thin contract emulsion, not wet plaster. Developers often advise waiting through the first year of drying before a full redecoration, because shrinkage cracks open at board joints and corners as the structure settles. Painting straight over those joints tends to mean doing them twice. Where a plasterer has skimmed new walls, though, the plaster itself needs the treatment covered on our new plaster and extension painting page.
Garage rooms, lofts and kitchen extensions
Several Upton layouts give owners obvious room to grow. The West Street villas at Site C have garages with “bonus rooms” above them, reached from a central mews, and those spaces are often finished more plainly at first and upgraded later. Three-storey townhouses lend themselves to loft rooms, and detached plots may have room for a rear extension. Each one produces a set of surfaces that all need different handling:
- Fresh skim on new walls and ceilings: checked for drying, then mist-coated with a breathable thinned emulsion.
- Sloping ceilings and dormer cheeks in loft rooms: cut in carefully where plaster meets new timber, with cracks at the joins caulked after the mist coat shows them up.
- The join between old and new: where a skimmed extension wall meets a ten-year-old painted wall, the two take paint differently, so the whole wall is coated to even it out.
- New MDF skirtings and doors: sealed on cut ends before priming, so they do not swell.
Drying and ventilation by the river
Upton runs down to the River Nene, with Upton Country Park, the Mill Race and the swales all close by. The air on the lower, park-side streets can stay damp for long spells in autumn and winter, and a sealed-up new room dries more slowly than the plasterer’s rule of thumb suggests. We check the plaster has turned an even pale colour with no darker patches in corners, reveals or behind radiators before mist-coating. Keeping a window open and the heating on low helps. A loft room under a three-storey roof, or a garage room over a cold garage floor, can lag behind the rest of the house, so those are checked wall by wall. Our guide to painting new plaster explains why rushing it causes peeling.
Wash-out water and the swales
Upton’s sustainable drainage is not a set of hidden pipes. The swales are open green channels that carry rainwater from the streets through the estate,. Emulsion washed out of rollers and trays in a front garden can end up in water meant to soak away cleanly. We bag dried waste and clean brushes and rollers in a sink connected to the foul drain, or take the water away, never tipping it into a street gully. On a site where the swale runs past the end of the garden, that is not just tidy practice.
For the rest of what we do in the neighbourhood, see our Upton area page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
