DH Painter & Decorator takes on commercial painting in Weston Favell, NN3, about 2.9 miles north-east of Northampton town centre. Dean covers premises from the village's pubs and halls to units around the Weston Favell Shopping Centre, planning each job around how the building is used.
The commercial buildings in Weston Favell
Weston Favell’s business premises fall into two very different groups. Inside the old village there is no real high street any more: the last general store lost its post office in 2008, and 20 High Street, the former village store, is now a barber’s with a modern shop window. What remains are the two pubs, the Bold Dragoon and the Trumpet, both 1930s replacements for older inns, plus the 1930s Church Hall, scout hall and the Northamptonshire County Lawn Tennis Club, reached by an alleyway off the village.
The other group is on a much larger scale. The Weston Favell Shopping Centre opened in 1974 and has about 68 units across two levels, anchored by a Tesco Extra, with a small retail park behind it. Along the Wellingborough Road there are also institutional buildings such as St John’s Hospital (1879) and the parish hall.
Our main commercial painting page covers how we plan business work in general. Here is how that applies to the buildings in Weston Favell.
Pubs: painting around opening hours
A pub has to keep trading, so the work is split into stages. Bar areas and toilets are painted in stages on quieter days agreed with the licensee, with fast-drying, low-odour paints and hard-wearing finishes on surfaces that take knocks from chairs and glasses. Outside, frontages and joinery are planned for dry spells. The Bold Dragoon has large open car parks to the north and south of the building, which makes it easier to set up access equipment and park than on the narrow streets of the old village.
Halls, chapels and the club
Halls such as the 1930s Church Hall and the scout hall usually run to a booking diary, so we work around it and leave rooms usable at the end of each session where we can. Wall finishes need to be scrubbable, and floors and fittings are sheeted every day. Because the scout hall is used by young people’s groups, we keep paint, ladders and tools packed away whenever we are not in the room, and we agree in advance which entrance and toilets we can use so the hall’s own users are not disturbed.
The 1853 Wesleyan Chapel on High Street, now the Sure Foundation Christian Fellowship, is a red-brick building with lancet windows. The conservation area appraisal treats the village’s red-brick buildings as an exception to its stone, and their brick should stay unpainted. Work there is limited to joinery and to the chapel’s window grills, which need rust treatment and a dark finish. The tennis club’s access by alleyway means materials are carried in by hand, which we allow for when planning.
- Village premises sit in the Weston Favell Conservation Area, so exterior colours should suit its muted reddy-brown and limestone palette.
- Bare coursed limestone stays unpainted; any coatings near old stone need to be breathable.
- Ladder work on the narrow High Street pavement needs barriers and short working windows.
Units near the shopping centre
For a unit in or around the shopping centre, the practical questions are usually the landlord’s rules on contractors, working hours and access to service areas, and how to keep the shop trading. We plan each stage with the centre management so the unit can keep trading, and work to a brand colour specification. If the job is mostly the frontage, see our shopfront painting page. For the rest of the area, our Weston Favell area page describes the local buildings in more detail.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
