Culdrose and the houses that change hands with it
The air station sits on the high ground just south of the town, and Helston grew with it. Service families arrive on a posting, stay a couple of years and move on, and a large share of the town's housing exists to serve that: the estates on the edges built for it, houses bought by forces landlords and let through agents, and family homes that are sold and bought more often than in a town without a base. For a decorator that means turnaround work. A house has to be handed back in good order at the end of one tenancy and be ready for the next family within days, and the arrival date is not one anyone can move.
The specification is the thing most landlords want settled once and then left alone. One neutral colour through the whole house that takes a touch-up without flashing, a hard-wearing finish on the woodwork and doors, the hall, stairs and landing in something that survives removals going in and out, and a proper anti-mould system in the bathrooms and the cold bedroom on the north side rather than a coat of white that greys again by the next winter. We note the colour and the product for each property so the next turnaround matches, and on the walk round from the check-out report we say which items are decorating and which need the landlord's builder first.
Many of the owners are not in Helston at all. A forces landlord is often posted elsewhere, so the keys come from the agent, the quote goes by email and sets out exactly what it covers, and photographs go back when the house is finished so it can be advertised or inspected without a visit. Dates carry more weight here than in most towns, and we would rather say a job does not fit the gap than take it and slip.
Family homes on the estates
The same estates hold plenty of owner-occupied houses: post-war and later semis, bungalows and short terraces, rendered over cavity walls, with the usual run of extensions and conservatories added since. The work is that of a family town, a full redecoration after buying, a whole house done before selling, a rendered exterior that has gone chalky and green on the weather side. What moves the price of a three-bed semi is not its size but its condition, how much filling and making good the walls need, whether the woodwork is sound or has to be taken back, and whether the ceilings have been stained by a leak or a smoker. We look before we quote, for exactly that reason.
Helston is inland, a few miles from the sea at Porthleven and Loe Bar, so its render is spared the salt that strips a harbour front. What it gets instead is wet and wind, a lot of both, on a town that sits high and open to the south-west. Exterior work runs from late spring to early autumn, the south-west elevation is washed down and repaired most carefully, and a house whose render was done in a settled week will outlast one done between showers.
Coinagehall Street and the streets down to the river
The old town is a different job. Coinagehall Street is wide and steep, running downhill from the Guildhall, lined with Georgian and Victorian fronts, and the streets off it drop away towards the river. Much of it is listed and all of it sits inside the conservation area: tall town houses of three storeys, shops on the ground floor with flats above, painted shopfronts, rendered or painted stone facades and sash windows. These are solid walls that need a breathable finish, sashes that are rubbed back to sound paint and rebuilt so they still slide, and shopfront timber taken back and given full coats so the joints stay sealed through a wet winter.
The slope sets the practicalities. A tower on a steep pavement needs proper footing and usually a licence, parking on the street is short, and the shops cannot close for a week, so fronts are done outside opening hours with the signage masked. On a listed front a change of colour can need consent, and we say so before a sample goes on the wall. The town has its own calendar too. On Flora Day in May the town centre is closed, and the weeks before it are when the fronts on the main street tend to get their attention, so that work is booked in early spring rather than asked for in April.
The Lizard villages that use Helston as their town
Helston is the town for the whole Lizard peninsula. People from Mullion, the Lizard, Coverack, St Keverne, Gweek and the villages between come in for the shops and the school, and a decorator's day on the peninsula often starts here. What changes out on the coast is the exposure and the property: salt on every seaward wall, holiday lets and second homes with owners elsewhere, and cottages whose repaint has to fit between bookings. The harbour and seafront are covered on our Porthleven page, and the open coast of the peninsula on our Mullion page, so this page stops at the town.