DH Painter & Decorator repaints shopfronts in West Hunsbury, NN4, the estate south-west of Northampton where a small Hunsbury Hill Road parade and one Towcester Road shop make up the frontages. Dean plans the work around trading hours, with early starts and quick-drying coatings.
A short parade shared with Camp Hill
West Hunsbury has no business park and no high street. Its shops are clustered on Hunsbury Hill Road (NN4 9UW), where there is a small supermarket, estate agents, a post office, a pharmacy and an optician beside Camp Hill Health Centre. The Hill Shop is a separate shop on Towcester Road. Because the parade is on the Camp Hill boundary, its customers come from both estates.
That makes shopfront painting here small in scale and fairly specific. Most jobs involve a single unit: a fascia board above the window, the frames and transoms around the glazing, an entrance door and a stallriser below the window. Some units may have a landlord who controls the outside of the building, so it is worth checking your lease before booking. Our main shopfront painting service covers the general approach. Below we look at what matters for these particular premises.
Painting around prescriptions, parcels and appointments
The businesses on this parade cannot simply close for a day. People collect prescriptions from a pharmacy, post parcels at a post office, keep appointments at an optician and shop for groceries at a supermarket, often at short notice. Our plan for a frontage here usually looks like this:
- start early, so preparation such as sanding and filling is finished before the busiest hours
- use quick-drying exterior coatings so the entrance can reopen the same day
- do the door and threshold at the very start or the very end of the day, never in the middle
- put signs on every wet surface and keep a clear path to the door
- clear up dust and paint debris before customers walk through it
We agree the hours with you, and with the landlord where needed, before work starts. If a particular day is busy for you, such as pension or benefit days at a post office, tell us and we will work around it.
Grime from the main roads
Towcester Road and the A43 carry a lot of traffic, and M1 junction 15A is about half a mile from the estate. Frontages on or near those roads, the Hill Shop in particular, gather a film of traffic grime that dulls paint and stops new coats from bonding. A degreasing wash is part of the preparation on these units. The fascia also gets a careful clean so that any lettering or signage fixed to it is not damaged.
Shoppers and deliveries use the pavement in front of each unit through the day. We keep ladders and steps inside a small cordoned area, work one bay of the frontage at a time and move the equipment away whenever a delivery needs the space. We also avoid leaving dust sheets where shoppers with prams or walking aids might catch them.
Choosing colours for a mixed parade
On a parade with several different businesses, each unit has its own branding, but the frontages are seen side by side. Dark, durable colours on stallrisers hide kick marks and splashes from the pavement, and a lighter fascia keeps lettering readable. If your business has brand colours, bring the references and we will match them as closely as exterior paint allows. Shopfronts sit within our wider commercial painting work. Painting for houses nearby is on the West Hunsbury overview.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
