Services
The five disciplines
Limewash & soft distemper
The finishes a lime-walled house was born wearing: limewash mixed from putty lime and earth pigments, brushed on thin and worked into the damp of the wall, or soft distemper where an interior wants depth without a film. Both breathe — they let the wall shed the moisture a plastic paint would trap, which on an 1800s house is the difference between a wall and a rot farm.
01
Silicate & mineral systems
For rendered elevations and estate cottages: potassium silicate paint that bonds chemically to the mineral substrate instead of sitting on top of it — no film to blister, no peel to scrape back in eight years, and a UV honesty that keeps earth pigments looking like themselves for decades. The pricier tin, and the last one the wall needs this half-century.
02
Sashes, soffits & glazing bars
The joinery the weather reads first, done by hand in linseed systems: glazing cut and puttied fresh, sashes eased and draught-sealed while they are out, glazing bars brushed where a gun would flood the profile. Lead-safe containment on anything pre-1978 — the test strip is shown to you before the colour card is.
03
Colour archaeology
Most period houses are wearing their third wrong colour over their first right one. We cut a small exposure window on a sheltered elevation, read the layers like tree rings, and mix what the house actually wore into whichever system the wall needs now — then photograph the window, label the swatch, and leave the record with you and, where it applies, the conservation officer.
04
Cornice, panels & shutters
The interior joinery of a period house, finished the way it was first done: run mouldings brushed in softened enamel with shadow lines kept crisp, panelled doors glazed and waxed rather than filmed, and window shutters freed, eased and painted so they close for the first time in a generation. It is slow work that reads as none at all — which is the point.
05
Anything built before 1978 gets tested before it gets tendered: the lead strip is shown to you, the containment plan is written into the quote, and the disposal receipts go in your house file. (555) 604-1975.
One window, cut small, tells the whole story
Under most period front doors there are six colours: the original oil, two honest repairs, and three fashion decisions made without the wall’s consent. The exposure window reads them in order, and everything after — the system, the sheen, the shade — is chosen from the evidence rather than from a fan deck. The window is made good the same day and photographed for the file; on listed work it is often the only test the officer will allow, and it is enough.
The wall
Houses still breathing
How it goes
From survey to seasonal handover
The same sequence on every period house — the only variable is the weather the elevations ask for.
Week 0
The exposure survey
Both sides of the house read — materials, moisture, the layers in the window — and a written system per elevation: which coating, which primer, which season. Fixed price inside a week, conservation pack included.
Week 1
Repairs before coatings
Failed putty cut out, loose render stitched, rotten sills spliced in matched timber. Paint is not a repair, and on a period house it is not a disguise either — the substrate gets fixed while it is bare and honest.
The window
Coats at the wall’s pace
Limewash goes on thin, four to five coats, sometimes two days running and sometimes a week apart — the wall’s drying decides, not the schedule. Silicate primes and finishes inside its strict pot life; oil systems get their overnight stands regardless.
Handover
The house file
Every colour mixed, with its recipe; every receipt; the exposure-window photograph; the maintenance calendar for the next decade. The file outlives the invoice, and the next painter — even if it is not us — inherits evidence instead of guesswork.
The breathing clause
Nothing we specify forms a film a lime wall cannot pass moisture through. If a wall we coated fails to breathe inside ten years because the system was wrong, the correction is ours — materials, scaffold and labour.
The evidence clause
Every colour is mixed to a written recipe and filed. Touch-ups in year twelve come out of the same formula, not from squinting at a weathered board — the file is yours, permanently.
The officer pack
Listed and conservation-area work ships with the specification, the exposure record and the materials sheets the officer asks for — written once, correctly, before the first tin opens.
Two firms quoted to “seal” our 1810s house — one showed us a plastic paint that would have peeled in sheets and taken the plaster’s face with it. Sashline cut a little window in the porch, read the house like a diary, and limewashed it the colour it started life wearing. The conservation officer asked to keep the photograph.
Rates
The conservation sheet
Restoration is priced by the elevation and by the coat, because the coats are not equal work. The survey is charged honestly and refunded against any contract — evidence first, always.
The exposure survey$180
Both elevations read, systems specified, officer pack written
Limewash, per coat per elevation$310
Putty lime, earth pigments, thinned and worked wet
Silicate system, per elevation$1,240
Primer and finish, chemically bonded, pot life honoured
Sash window, per sash$205
Eased, puttied, brushed in linseed, draught-sealed
Glazing bars, per window$95
Brushed by hand — no gun touches a profile
Cornice & run mouldings, per room$380
Softened enamel, shadow lines kept crisp
Shutters, per pair$260
Freed, eased, painted, and closed at last
Colour archaeology, per windowincluded
Exposure cut, layers read, original mixed and filed
Word of mouth
Three houses, three eras
The limewash went on looking like nothing much and cured into the exact colour of the church next door — which, the exposure window showed, was the whole idea. Two winters on it wears its weather like cloth instead of shedding it like plastic.
They found the lead on day one, showed us the strip, and had the containment plan in the quote before we asked what any of it meant. The nursery sashes were done first, dried hard, and the rest of the house followed.
The conservation officer approved on first reading — the pack was that complete. Every other firm treated the listing as an obstacle; Sashline treated it as the specification, which turned out to be exactly what it is.
Fair questions
Why can’t you just use modern masonry paint?
On a cement-rendered 1990s wall you can, and we will say so. On lime plaster or historic render, a plastic film traps the moisture the wall was built to move — the paint blisters, the plaster blows, and the repair bill dwarfs the paint job. The survey tells us which wall you actually have.
Is limewash really worth the extra coats?
It is the only finish that gets harder as the wall breathes through it. Four or five thin coats, each keyed into the last, and the surface can be renewed forever with another coat instead of stripped back to bare — which, on a house that will outlive us all, is the cheaper arithmetic.
How do you handle lead paint safely?
Tested first, contained always: sheeting, HEPA extraction, wet sanding only, and licensed disposal with receipts into your house file. The test strip is shown before tender, the plan is written into the quote, and no pre-1978 surface is dry-sanded on this site, ever.
Do you deal with the conservation officer directly?
We prepare everything the officer asks for — specification, exposure record, materials sheets — and we attend the site meeting. In thirty-eight years the answer has been approved far more often than not, because the pack is written by people who read old walls for a living.
What does the maintenance calendar cover?
A decade of small acts: which elevation to wash down and when, the limewash coat that will be due, the putty to check, the gutters whose overflow will otherwise decide everything. Restoration is a relationship with a building, and the calendar is how it survives us.
Tell us when the house was built.
The survey reads both elevations, the systems are written per face, and the officer pack travels with the quote. Evidence first, coatings second — the way old houses have always preferred it. (555) 604-1975, the workshop, Monday to Friday.