Paint Stripping in Cullompton

The Moore & Franks approach in Cullompton

Cullompton's Fore Street conservation core is cob and lime render — The Walronds, the frontages round St Andrew's — and paint on fabric that old has to breathe or it fails. Culm-valley damp and farmland air keep the walls moist, so a modern coating traps moisture, blisters and flakes; the newer K-Rend estates at Knightswood and Colebrook show tired, peeling paint too. Taking failed paint back off soft, breathable surfaces is careful work. Moore & Franks use DOFF superheated steam to soften and lift it at low pressure, never a grit-blast that would wreck the render. Family-run, twenty-five years, £5m insured, twenty minutes up the M5 from Topsham.

Cullompton's Fore Street conservation core is cob and lime render — The Walronds, the listed frontages, the streets around St Andrew's — and paint on fabric that old is a job for a light touch. Culm-valley damp and farmland air keep the walls moist, and a modern coating trapped over breathable cob blisters and flakes as the damp pushes out behind it. Stripping that failed paint back without harming the soft surface is exactly what DOFF superheated steam is for: it softens and lifts the coating at low pressure and leaves the lime or cob sound and still breathing.

The newer estates at Knightswood, Colebrook and along the Honiton Road are the other half of the work — modern K-Rend and silicone render, often over-painted, where the masonry paint has started peeling on the damp, shaded elevations. Standard masonry coatings steam off readily; where a wall has been done in a plastic or elastomeric paint that won't lift cleanly, we soften it first with a poultice or chemical stripper and then take the residue back to sound render. We look at what is actually on the wall before deciding, rather than assuming every estate house is the same.

Sat in the Culm valley with farmland on every side, Cullompton's walls stay damp and paint fails readily — but we are honest about when a full strip earns its keep. If the coating is broadly sound and only flaking in patches, taking the whole lot off is money wasted and we will say so, pointing you at the repair. Where the paint has actually blown, stripping it back to sound first is what makes the repaint last on a slow-drying wall. The free site visit is where we work out which it is.

Our Cullompton customers are typically within 20 minutes of our Exeter base. We cover the wider EX15 postcode area and the surrounding villages (St Andrew's Church, Fore Street conservation area, The Walronds, Culm Valley, Knightswood estate, Colebrook).