Paint Removal in Exeter

The Moore & Franks approach in Exeter

Walk the older streets of Exeter and you find plenty of solid-wall brick and stone that has been painted over the years — Victorian terraces in St Leonard's and Newtown, period stone and cob around Southernhay and the Cathedral. Those walls were built to breathe, and modern masonry paint seals the damp in. Moore & Franks remove unwanted coatings, limewash and graffiti with DOFF superheated steam and specialist strippers, bringing the original brick and stone back without grit-blasting the face. We are just down the road on Ferryman Way in Topsham. Family-run, twenty-five years, £5m public liability.

A lot of our Exeter paint-removal work is on solid-wall property that should never have been painted. The Victorian brick terraces around St Leonard's and Newtown, and the older stone and cob near Southernhay and the Cathedral, were built to let moisture move through the wall and out again. Someone brushes masonry paint over that and the damp has nowhere to go, so you get blown patches, spalling brick faces and a musty feel indoors. We lift the coating off with low-pressure superheated steam so the wall can dry and the original face returns, rather than sealing the problem in tighter under another coat.

Out through St Thomas and Wonford there is a good deal of older painted render carrying decades of over-painting, and down on the Quay and around the city-centre shopfronts we get regular graffiti and tag work. The Exe valley keeps everything damp, so trapped moisture behind paint shows itself faster here than on higher, drier ground. Graffiti we shift with steam and a graffiti-specific remover so there is no scoured patch left behind. Over-painting on stone detailing, plinths and mullions we take back to bare where the surface gives it up cleanly.

Every Exeter job opens with a test patch on a discreet corner. Coatings and substrates vary hugely street to street, so we prove the method lifts the paint cleanly and leaves the surface sound before committing to a whole elevation. It also lets us be straight with you: most brick and stone comes back well, but some historic coatings have bonded in for good and will not return fully to bare, and we would rather show you that on the test than promise the impossible. If it is a listed building, we will flag where consent may be needed before anything starts.

Our Exeter customers are right on our doorstep. We cover the wider EX1, EX2, EX3, EX4, EX5 postcode area and the surrounding villages (St Leonard's, Heavitree, Pinhoe, Topsham, Pennsylvania, Exeter Quay).