Painted terraces above the bay, and doing a whole row at once
The front of Penzance is a run of tall terraces above the promenade, rendered and painted in pale colours, white, cream, stone and the odd soft pink, with the Jubilee Pool at one end and the harbour beyond it. The town faces south-east across Mount's Bay, and that changes the job. The Atlantic weather comes over the hill from behind the town, not straight at these walls as it does at Porthleven or St Ives. The front still gets salt when the bay is rough, but what it mostly gets is sun and a slow, steady weathering. A promenade wall chalks and dulls rather than peeling in sheets, and every few years it wants a wash-down and a fresh coat rather than a strip-back.
The houses are three or four storeys, with bays, stucco mouldings, cornices and sashes on every floor. That is a scaffold, not a ladder, and on the promenade side a licence for the pavement. Once it is up everything on that elevation is done in the same visit. Each house has its own colour but they weather together, and a freshly painted house beside a tired one shows both up. Where two or three neighbours want their fronts done in the same year the scaffold is shared, and we quote the houses together, with the quote setting out what each one covers.
Much of this is listed, and the centre of the town sits inside a large conservation area: Chapel Street running down to the harbour, Regent Terrace, Morrab Road and the promenade. Repainting a listed front in its existing colour is usually straightforward. Changing the colour can need listed building consent from Cornwall Council, and we say so on the walk round and hold the quote while you ask. The older walls are lime under the paint and need a finish they can dry through, and a stucco cornice that has gone beyond making good is a plasterer's job before it is ours.
The streets up the hill, the estates, and the landlords who own a good deal of them
Behind the front Penzance is a Victorian town: two-storey terraces climbing away from Market Jew Street and running out towards Newlyn and Heamoor, then the estates, Treneere and the later housing out towards Gulval. This is the ordinary work of the town: hall, stairs and landing, a whole three-bed house after buying it, the rendered outside of a terrace done from ladders and a short tower in the settled months. Parking on the narrow streets is short, so we agree where the van goes beforehand, and a rear elevation reached through a back lane or a neighbour's garden is sorted out before quoting. What moves the price of a three-bed here is condition rather than size: how much filling the walls need, whether the woodwork can be rubbed back or has to come off, damp on the seaward side of a solid wall. We look before we quote.
Penzance has a great deal of private renting. The tall houses in the centre have been divided into flats and the terraces are let through the agents in the town, which gives a decorator a steady run of turnarounds between tenancies: one neutral colour that takes a touch-up without flashing, a hard finish on the woodwork, a proper anti-mould system in the bathroom, and the colour and product noted so the next turnaround matches. The communal hallway in a converted house dates the building fastest and is worth doing in the same visit as an empty flat. One of our reviews describes months of varied work across a landlord's properties with the tenants kept informed, which is how it has to be done here.
Shops, offices and the public sector
Penzance is the town for the whole of Penwith. Market Jew Street, Causewayhead and Chapel Street carry the shops, the hospital and the council offices are here. Commercial decorating is planned round the working day. A shop is done between closing and opening, or in the quiet weeks after Christmas, with the reopening date fixed before we start, and on a listed street the signage is masked while the timber shopfront is rebuilt in full coats. Offices and public buildings are done in sections, or at the start and end of the day and on Saturdays. If your organisation needs paperwork first, tell us when you ask for the quote and we will say what we can provide.
Choosing a colour the sun will not spoil
The last thing to say about Penzance is the sun. A front facing south-east across the bay is in full light from early morning to mid-afternoon, and that does more to a painted wall here than the salt does. Strong colours fade first and fade unevenly: a deep blue goes grey, a red drifts towards pink, a dark green goes flat. Pale colours fade too, but they fade towards themselves. A cream that loses a little depth still reads as cream, which is one reason the promenade has settled on the colours it has.
So we look at the sample on the wall in the afternoon sun and say when a colour is likely to look tired in a few summers. A shade deeper than the card allows for the fade, light-fast pigments hold a colour longer, and the north-facing back of the same house can carry a stronger colour than the front ever will. The aim is a wall that still looks right in five summers, not one that only looks right the week the scaffold comes down.