We paint the outside of homes in Yardley Hastings, the NN7 village about 7.3 miles east of Northampton town centre on the A428. In the conservation area that usually means joinery, porches and already-painted surfaces on limestone cottages; on The Leys, Highfield Way and the Castle Ashby Road bungalows it means a conventional full exterior repaint.
Two kinds of house, two kinds of exterior job
Yardley Hastings splits fairly neatly in two for outside painting. Along High Street, Little Street, Little Lane and the Square, the houses are 17th and 18th century cottages, farmhouses and estate terraces of coursed limestone rubble under red clay plain tiles and Castle Ashby pantiles. Those walls are meant to be seen, so the paintbrush goes to the timber: small casement windows, plank and panelled doors, porches, gable windows in converted attics and any single-storey outbuilding or former privy behind a terrace that has been painted before.
West of the village, The Leys were built in light brick by the local authority in 1935. Highfield Way is dark brown brick, and the bungalows on Castle Ashby Road date from 1962, some partly fronted in reclaimed limestone. These have ordinary fascias, soffits, doors, sills and fences, with more room to set up, and take the kind of whole-house repaint described on our exterior painting page.
White casements and the problem with dark stain
The 2015 Yardley Hastings Conservation Area Appraisal notes that the traditional timber casements are mostly painted white. It goes further and calls dark brown stain on the windows and doors of older houses out of place, asking for paint in period colours instead. So on a cottage, the exterior work the appraisal points towards is taking joinery that was stained at some point back to a sound, paintable surface and finishing it in white or a traditional door colour.
Stain does not simply take paint on top. It has to be cleaned, abraded and, where it is still glossy or flaking, partly removed, then primed with a product that will bond to it. Old softwood casements often have soft, grey timber at the bottom rail and on the sills, which gets cut out and filled or spliced before any primer goes on. Plank doors swell in wet weather and shrink back in summer, so we use a flexible gloss or an oil-based system that copes with that movement.
Listed cottages need extra care. The village has 23 listed entries, many of them cottages on High Street, Little Street and Little Lane, and changing colour or coating on listed fabric can need listed building consent. Dean will raise this before quoting rather than after.
Estate cottages and who agrees the colour
Around a third of the buildings in Yardley Hastings belong to the Compton family’s Castle Ashby estate, including many terraced estate cottages. If you rent or occupy one of those, the colours and specification for the outside are likely to be the estate’s decision. We are happy to quote against the estate’s specification, and we would ask you to confirm their approval before we start.
Setting up on Little Street, High Street and the Square
On Little Street and around the Square, front walls often meet the carriageway directly. That leaves no garden to stand a ladder in, some stretches have a footway on only one side, and parked cars fill the kerb because few homes have drives. Before a frontage is painted we agree where the van goes, how the ladder or tower is footed, and how pedestrians get past safely.
Overhead telephone and electricity cables run along several streets, which affects how ladders and extension poles are moved along a frontage. Along High Street a few front doors can only be reached over little footbridges spanning the Grendon brook, so materials and kit are carried in rather than wheeled.
The brook and the mature trees along High Street also mean damp, shade and leaf and sap fall. Walls and joinery on that side stay wet for longer, and we plan exterior work for the drier months and treat any green growth before priming. Our guide to timing exterior painting explains why that matters.
For a wider view of decorating in the village, see our Yardley Hastings area page.
Last updated by Dean, DH Painter & Decorator.
