Fronts that thousands of people look at
The main street runs along the shore, one long line of old granite and rendered houses, pubs, galleries, cafes and shops, with the Mount out of the window on one side and the beach and causeway below. Visitors come to see the Mount and end up looking at Marazion, and a house front here is on show in a way that a front in Camborne never is. So the colour matters more than usual. A wall that faces south across the bay sits in strong light all day, and in a salt haze off the water on a good many of those days, and a colour that reads well in that light is a soft one: white, cream, a warm stone, a pale blue or grey that takes the sea behind it rather than fighting it. We hold the sample up on the wall in the afternoon, with the Mount in the same view, before anything is bought.
The shopfronts and gallery fronts are the same story with a deadline on it. Painted timber fascias, signwritten boards masked and worked round, sashes and doors in a colour the owner has chosen to be noticed, all of it seen at close range by people walking slowly and looking at everything. That kind of front is rubbed back to sound paint and rebuilt in full coats rather than freshened with one, because a tired shopfront on this street costs its owner trade. A pub or cafe is done in the weeks after the season, when the town is quiet and the timber has a fair chance of drying.
Some of the older buildings are listed, so a change of colour on a listed front is checked with Cornwall Council before we start, and the older render gets a finish it can breathe through. Salt is washed off first. It lands on every seaward wall here, and a coat over an unwashed wall is a coat that lifts.
Lets, second homes, and getting the van in
A large share of the houses with the view are holiday lets and second homes, and the work runs through the housekeeper or the agent: keys from whoever holds them, a quote by email that sets out what it covers, dates taken from the booking calendar, and a photograph back as each room is finished. The bulk of it, the full repaint, the bathroom, the outside, belongs in the empty months from autumn to spring. In season it is a scuffed hall or a bedroom between a Saturday and a Saturday.
Summer access is the practical problem. The main street is not closed, but from late morning it is full of people walking in the road and cars looking for a space they will not find, and the car parks by the beach fill early. So in July and August we are unloaded before ten and the van is moved off the street, or the day starts once the visitors have gone back to Penzance, and the kit is carried in from wherever we have agreed to park. It is worth agreeing that before the quote rather than on the morning.
The bungalows above the town
Behind the main street the ground climbs, and on the slopes above the old town are the later bungalows and houses, with Marazion Marsh spreading out flat to the west towards Long Rock. These are the ordinary jobs of the town: a rendered bungalow washed down and coated from ladders in the settled months, fascias and windows rebuilt on the side that takes the weather, a whole house redecorated after a purchase. They still get the salt, if less of the haze than the shore, and the south-facing render fades in the same sun, so the same rules on preparation and colour apply. We look before we quote, and say on the walk round which elevations need the full treatment.