Painters and decorators for Polzeath, booked for the months the village is empty

Polzeath in summer is a beach car park, a lane full of wetsuits, and every house on the hill occupied. In February it is the same houses with the shutters down and the surf running in with nobody on it. Most of the property here is a holiday let, a second home or both, and the work on it happens in the second village, not the first.

That suits us. From Redruth it is an hour or so up the A30 and across from Wadebridge, so we do not come to Polzeath for an afternoon. We come for a week, or a fortnight, and do a whole house in one stay: the inside, the outside if the weather gives us a run, the garage and the balcony rails while the ladders are up. A single bedroom on its own is a long way to drive, and we would say so.

Exterior work needs more care with the calendar than the inside. Late spring is the safest bet, after the winter storms and before the first bookings, but the window between a dry April week and a full house at Whitsun is a narrow one. So the inside goes into the deep winter, the outside is booked for the first settled stretch of spring, and if the weather takes that stretch away we tell you straight rather than coating a wet wall.

There is not much old Polzeath. A few cottages and farm buildings, then twentieth-century houses and bungalows climbing the slopes either side of the beach and along the cliff road to New Polzeath, and, more each year, houses knocked down and rebuilt in white render, timber cladding, grey aluminium and a great deal of glass. Nearly all of it was built for the view, which means nearly all of it faces the Atlantic.

A west or north-west elevation here gets salt spray in the air on an ordinary day and driving rain from the sea in a bad week. Painted render on that side chalks and fades sooner than the sheltered gable, and green growth comes back on the damp corners every winter. It is washed down properly first, the hairline cracks are cut out and filled, and it gets two coats of a masonry paint that suits the wall, in a colour chosen because it will still look right in five summers. On this coast that is white, off-white and the soft greys, which is why the village looks the way it does.

The newer houses have more painted and stained timber than they look to have: cladding, balustrades, decking, the frames round the big sliding doors, soffits under the overhangs. Stained timber goes silver on the seaward face and stays warm on the lee. Stained cladding is maintained on its own cycle, painted timber is rubbed back to sound paint and rebuilt in coats, and both are done with the render so the property is only scaffolded once.

The bungalows and chalets from the sixties and seventies are simpler, rendered walls and timber fascias, often with a flat roof or balcony that leaks at the edge and stains the ceiling below. We paint the stain once the leak is fixed, not before.

Most owners are not in Polzeath when the work is done. The job is set up by email and phone with whoever holds the keys and the booking calendar, the owner, the agent or the housekeeper. We visit once to look, send a quote that lists what it covers room by room, take the dates from the gaps in the bookings, and send pictures as each part is finished, so the house can go back on the listing without anyone driving down to check it.

For a let, the finish is chosen for the guests it will get. Sandy feet, wet dogs and a different family every Saturday wear a house faster than one family does in a year, so the walls get a durable, wipeable emulsion that takes a touch-up without flashing, the woodwork a hard-wearing satin, and the bathrooms an anti-mould system, because a house shut up for four months with the heating low will grow mould in the corners otherwise. Neutral colours are kept the same throughout so the housekeeper can keep a tin for the marks between our visits.

In season it is changeover work, and honest changeover work. A scuffed stairwell or a bedroom that needs a coat fits between one Saturday and the next if we are already on the coast. A full repaint does not, whatever the listing says, and we would rather say that in June than leave a half-finished house for a Saturday arrival.

The village is reached down steep, narrow roads and the houses on the hill are on lanes narrower still, with little parking at the door. In winter the van sits outside. From Easter on we agree where it goes before the first morning, carry the kit the last stretch if we have to, and keep the drive clear for the guests who arrive on the Saturday. Scaffold for a tall seaward face is arranged as part of the quote, with the dates it will be up set out so the agent can block them. Two houses on the same hill in the same fortnight is a better use of the drive from Redruth than one, and the price reflects that.