The shop
Alan Barrowden bought the yard in 1974 because it had a north light and a tap.
It still has both. There are four of us now, we still mix in the same back room, and we have turned down every offer to become part of somebody’s group.
Fifty-two years, two families and one yard.
Alan Barrowden and Peter Rowe met on a hospital contract in Peterborough in 1971 and set up three years later with a Bedford van and a ladder rack. Peter retired in 1998. Alan kept going until 2016, when his daughter Ellen took the business over — she had by then been on the books for eighteen years and had her Advanced Craft.
We are deliberately four people. Four is the largest number that lets the person who quoted your job also be the person who does it, and that single fact prevents most of what goes wrong in this trade. It also means we book six to eight weeks out, and we would rather tell you that than pretend otherwise.
Most of our work is within twenty-five miles: the Georgian stone in Stamford and Ketton, the estate cottages around Easton and Collyweston, and a steady amount of straightforward repainting in the newer streets north of the town. About a third comes from two lettings agents who have used us since the nineties.
What we will not do
We do not spray a kitchen that has not been degreased, we do not paint exterior masonry after the end of September, and we do not sand a textured ceiling that has not been tested. Each of those is a way of finishing a job faster and having it fail later, and we would rather lose the work.
How a wall is actually built up
Every quote we send names the system, not just the colour.
This is what a specification looks like on our paperwork. Yours will have your substrate and your product names in it, and it is the document you would hand to somebody else if you ever needed to prove what was done.
- Substrate
- Existing gypsum skim, sound, medium suction. Two hairline settlement cracks at the reveal, cut out and filled.
- Preparation
- Washed with sugar soap, filled and stopped, sanded to 180 grit under H-class extraction, junctions caulked with acrylic.
- Primer
- None required on sound existing emulsion. Stain block spot-applied to the two water marks under the window.
- System
- Trade vinyl matt emulsion, walls and ceiling. Water-based satinwood to all joinery over an acrylic undercoat.
- Coats
- Two finish coats throughout. Third coat to the stairwell wall at no charge — the colour change needs it and we allowed for it.
- Sheen
- Matt to ceilings, vinyl matt to walls, satinwood to trim. Emulsion and trim run different ladders and are not comparable.
- Coverage
- Nominal 12 m² per litre per coat on sound wall; 9 m² on the newly filled areas, which drink.
- Drying
- Recoat at two to four hours on emulsion. Joinery overnight between coats — we do not rush a satinwood.
“My father priced by the day and told people exactly what a day bought. I have never found a reason to change it, and every year somebody tells me it is why they rang us.”Ellen Rowe, who runs the shop
Some of it finished
And, unusually for this trade, some of it half done.
Most decorators only photograph the last morning. A finished room proves very little — it looks the same whoever painted it. The middle of the job is the part worth showing.
Come and look at the yard if you like.
People do. The kettle is on most mornings and there is usually something on the bench worth seeing.