Painter and decorator in Pool, between Camborne and Redruth

The job we are asked for most in Pool is a straightforward one: a house that needs bringing back to a clean, neutral finish, usually because tenants have moved out, a family has just bought it, or the last repaint is a decade old. Walls and ceilings in emulsion, woodwork rubbed down and repainted in satin, stains sealed rather than painted over, and the scuffs on the stairs and hall dealt with because that is where a house shows its wear first.

With Cornwall College and the Innovation Centre on the doorstep, a fair number of the houses and flats here are let to students or to people working in and around the business park. Changeovers tend to bunch up in the summer, so if you are a landlord with a house to turn round before September, the earlier you tell us the better. We agree the days, keep to them, and if the property is still occupied we work around the people in it rather than expecting them to clear out.

For owner-occupiers the pattern is different: one or two rooms at a time, a new kitchen or bathroom that has left the decorator's work to finish, or a whole ground floor in one go. We are happy with either. Being based in Redruth, a job in Pool is a few minutes away, so splitting a house over two visits costs you nothing in travel.

Pool is honest about what it is: the stretch of the A3047 that joins Camborne to Redruth, with Heartlands and the Robinson's Shaft engine house on one side, the big Tesco and the retail park on the other, and housing filling in behind both. Along the main road are the older terraces and cottages, granite under render or bare stone, with solid walls that want a breathable paint and a bit more filling than a modern house.

Behind them the bulk of the housing is later. Council-built and private semis from the post-war decades, with cement render or pebbledash outside and plasterboard or hard plaster inside, and then the newer estates built as the old industrial land was cleared. These are quicker to decorate than the terraces, and the work is mostly about condition: cracked render round the windows, dash that has gone chalky, ceilings marked by an old leak, and woodwork where the gloss has yellowed and chipped.

Exposure is the same as the rest of the Camborne and Redruth ridge. There is no salt spray to speak of, but the south-westerlies come over Carn Brea with a lot of rain in them, and the render on the west and south sides goes first. Exterior painting is a late-spring-to-early-autumn job here, once the walls have dried out and there is a run of settled days for the coats to cure.

The price of a three-bed semi is set by the surfaces, not the floor plan, so it has to be seen. How much woodwork there is, whether there is paper to strip, the state of the ceilings and how much furniture is in the way move the number more than the size of the rooms. On an exterior we walk round, check the render by hand and note where a tower or ladders will stand. Most of the semis have a drive or a front garden, which makes access easier than in the terraces.

The quote lists what is included and how many coats, and anything that turns up once the paper is off gets a phone call, not a line on the invoice.