The summer gap
Falmouth has a very large student population for a town its size, from Falmouth University and Exeter's campus at Penryn, and a great many of its terraced houses are let to students on annual tenancies. They empty in June or early July and fill again in September, and that gap is when the decorating happens. It is a short season, every landlord wants the same weeks, and the work has to be booked in spring, not once the last tenant has handed the keys back.
A student turnaround is a particular kind of job: Blu-tack marks in every bedroom, scuffs the length of the hall and stairs, a kitchen that has had a year of steam, damp corners in the rooms nobody heated. We work from the check-out report or a walk round with the agent, separate what is decorating from what needs a builder or plasterer first, and plan the order so those trades are through before the paint goes on.
The specification matters more than the colour. A shared house needs walls that take a wipe-down and a touch-up without flashing, so a scrubbable finish in one neutral through the whole house, a hard-wearing paint on the woodwork and doors, and a proper anti-mould system in the bathrooms and cold bedrooms rather than a coat of white that greys again by Christmas. One colour and one product across a landlord's properties means a September touch-up matches, and we keep the note.
Licensing, agents and several houses at once
Larger HMOs need a licence from Cornwall Council, and licence conditions cover the condition of the property as well as its safety, so a house that has been let hard for years is often being brought up to a standard, not just freshened. Communal areas are where that shows first: the hall, stairs and landings, the kitchen and bathrooms, the parts every tenant and every inspector walks through. Those get the most durable specification in the house and are done first.
Most Falmouth landlord work comes through a letting agent or a keyholder rather than the owner, who may be miles away. We are used to that: keys collected from the office, photographs sent when each house is finished so it can be advertised or inspected without a visit, and a straight answer on which dates fit. For a landlord with several houses in the town we would rather take them as a block of weeks, one after another, than scatter them through the summer. One specification, one van in the town, every house handed back before the September tenants arrive, and each house looked at up front so the quotes come together rather than one at a time.
The seafront: hotels, flats and holiday lets
The other side of Falmouth is the seafront, the hotels and blocks of flats along Cliff Road above Gyllyngvase, the holiday lets and second homes towards Swanpool, and the pubs, cafes and shops of the high street. Hotel and holiday-let decorating runs on a booking calendar rather than a tenancy: whole floors and full exteriors in the quiet months from late autumn to early spring, and in season changeover work, a bedroom or a corridor done between Saturdays with the housekeeper's list in hand. We leave the room ready for the cleaner, not for another trade.
Salt is the design constraint out here. The seafront elevations face straight down the Channel and get the spray, so render is washed down properly before any coat, painted timber on balconies, sills and sash frames is rubbed back to sound paint and rebuilt in full coats, and ironwork is taken to bright metal and primed first. An elevation done in a dry spell in October will hold. One done in a damp week will not, and we will say so rather than start.
Up the hill: the owner-occupied terraces
Between the seafront and the high street, Georgian and Victorian terraces climb the hill in tiers, and plenty of them are family homes rather than lets. Solid walls, rendered or painted stone, sash windows, and streets that are steep, narrow and short of parking. That last point is practical: for an exterior we work out beforehand where the van goes, whether a tower will fit on the pavement and needs a licence, and which stage of the job will block the street least. For an interior it means carrying everything up from wherever the van ends up.
Inside, these are period rooms, high ceilings, cornices and a stairwell rising through three floors, with the added Falmouth problem of damp on the exposed side of a solid wall. Older walls need a breathable paint a wet winter can dry through, distempered lime plaster needs taking back before emulsion will stay on it, and a room is lined before it is papered. The sashes are usually the first thing an owner asks about, because a sash on the seaward side is worked hard by the weather: rubbed back, putty replaced where it has gone, coats rebuilt so the joints are sealed and the window still slides.
The town is sheltered in its middle and up the estuary towards Penryn, and open on the beach side. The same house, with the same paint, will need looking at sooner on Cliff Road than on a street behind the Moor, so an exterior quote here is worked out elevation by elevation, once we have stood in front of the wall on a windy day.