Paint Stripping in Ottery St Mary

The Moore & Franks approach in Ottery St Mary

Ottery St Mary keeps a good stock of old cob and stone cottages round The Square and Silver Street, and paint on breathable fabric like that fails in a particular way — trap Otter-valley damp behind a modern coating and it blisters, flakes and takes the surface with it. There's tired painted render on the estates up West Hill and Tip Hill too. Stripping failed paint off cob or lime needs a light hand, never a blast. Moore & Franks use DOFF superheated steam to soften and lift old coatings at low pressure, leaving the historic surface sound and breathable. Family-run, twenty-five years in, £5m insured, twenty minutes from Topsham.

Ottery St Mary's old cob and stone cottages around The Square and Silver Street are the jobs that need the most care. Cob has to breathe, and when a modern impermeable paint gets trapped over it, Otter-valley damp pushes up behind the film until it blisters, flakes and pulls the soft surface away with it. Stripping paint off fabric this old and this fussy is no place for a blast or a harsh scrape. DOFF superheated steam softens and lifts the failed coating at the lowest working pressure, leaving the historic cob or lime surface sound and, importantly, still able to breathe.

The newer estates climbing West Hill and up Tip Hill and Sidmouth Road are the opposite kind of job — modern render coated in masonry paint that has streaked and started flaking within a few years of going up. The thin coatings hold surface damp on the shaded sides and the paint lets go. Where those are standard masonry finishes the steam lifts them readily; where a wall has been over-coated in a plastic or elastomeric paint that won't shift cleanly, we soften it first with a poultice or chemical stripper, then take the residue back to sound render.

Out along the lanes toward Cadhay and Tipton St John the heavy tree cover keeps walls shaded and damp, and paint fails faster in that canopy. But failing and needing a full strip are not the same thing, and we will tell you the difference. If a coating is broadly sound and only flaking in patches, taking the whole lot off is overkill — we will point you at the repair. Where the paint really has blown, on cob or on modern render, stripping back first is what makes the new finish hold. The visit and quote are free.

Our Ottery St Mary customers are typically within 20 minutes of our Exeter base. We cover the wider EX11, EX10, EX5 postcode area and the surrounding villages (St Mary's Church and the Tumbling Weir, The Square and Silver Street, Cadhay Manor, West Hill, Tipton St John, Newton Poppleford).