Category Archives: House Painting

How to paint timber, composite, uPVC and steel front doors: prep, primers, the panel order, gloss vs satin, and why the start time matters.

How to strip each type of wallpaper, what turns up underneath, and how the wall is washed, repaired and primed so new paint does not crack.

Painting pebbledash is mostly preparation. How hollow render, algae, chalky walls, paint choice, access and Manchester weather are dealt with properly.

Ceiling, walls, then woodwork, with all the prep done first. Why that order works, when trades paint woodwork first, and how new plaster changes things.

Nine practical checks to make before booking a painter and decorator, from insurance and site visits to written quotes, named products and red flags.

Exterior painting is the one trade where the calendar makes the decision for you. Not the paint, not the preparation, not how good the decorator is — the weather, and specifically about five months of it. Get the timing right and a coating lasts a decade. Get it wrong and it can fail in its […]

You did everything right. Dry day, decent product, two coats, careful cutting in around the posts. Six months later it is flaking off in sheets, or it never took properly in the first place and sat on the surface in patches like water on a waxed car. It is almost never the paint. In nearly […]

Fresh plaster is the one surface in a house that punishes impatience. It looks finished within a day or two, it feels dry to the hand, and it is nowhere near ready. Paint it too soon, or seal it with the wrong thing first, and it will let go — sometimes in sheets, usually within […]

Almost every house in Greater Manchester built or decorated between the 1960s and the 1990s has a textured ceiling somewhere in it. Swirls, stipple, fans, combed patterns and the heavy popcorn-style finish that most people simply call Artex. Most owners want them gone, and covering Artex ceilings comes down to three options — but one […]

A resprayed kitchen either looks like a new kitchen or it peels inside a year. There is very little in between. What separates the two is not the colour, the brand of lacquer or the sprayer — it is a single unglamorous step that costs almost nothing and gets skipped constantly. In short What a […]