Painters and decorators in Port Isaac, working round the bookings and the hill

That is the first question about Port Isaac, and the honest answer depends on the size of the job. A scuffed hallway, a bedroom that needs a coat, a bathroom ceiling gone spotty, those fit between a Saturday changeover and the next one, with the property left ready for the cleaner rather than for us to come back. A whole cottage, walls, ceilings and every bit of woodwork, does not fit in a week, however the calendar is arranged.

So the bulk of the work here is done in the quiet months. From late autumn to early spring the lets are empty for long stretches, the owners are often elsewhere, and the job runs through the agent or the housekeeper: 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 outside goes into the same programme where the weather allows.

Port Isaac is about an hour from Redruth by the A30 and A39, further than most of the places we cover. It changes what is worth the drive. A full cottage, inside and out, is. Two or three lets on the same lane, planned together with their agents so we are in the village for a week, very much is. A single door probably is not, and we would rather say so than quote badly for it.

The old village runs steeply down to the Platt and the harbour, and the lanes are narrow enough that in places two people cannot pass carrying anything. In summer the lower village is no place for a van, and for much of the year it is no place to park one. So the van goes in the car park at the top and everything is carried down. We allow for that in the time, we agree where we are parking before the day, and we talk to the neighbours if a ladder has to stand in a lane that other people use.

Inside, the cottages are small and steep. Low ceilings, a stair that turns twice, a bedroom in the roof lit by a single window, and no room to store furniture out of the way. One room at a time is the only way to do it, so the house stays usable. That takes longer than the floor area suggests, and the quote allows for it rather than the day discovering it.

The old cottages are built of slate rubble, either rendered and whitewashed or hung with slates on the walls that take the weather. Slate-hanging is not something to paint, and where a cottage has it we leave it alone and work round it. The render is the part that gets coated, and on walls this old it needs a finish it can dry through. A sealed, plastic coating on a solid slate wall traps the water the winter has driven in, and the render comes off with the paint a few springs later. Much of the old village is a conservation area and a good many of the buildings are listed, so the colours stay close to what is there already, white and cream on the walls with the colour on the doors and the sashes, and a change on a listed front is checked with Cornwall Council first.

The harbour faces roughly north, and that matters more than people think. Walls that never get direct sun stay damp longer after rain, grow green faster, and take longer to dry before they can be painted. A north-facing wall washed down on Monday may not be ready for paint until Wednesday, and we do not paint until it is. Painted timber, the sashes, doors and the odd fascia, is where the salt and the damp do the most damage, so it is rubbed back to sound paint, soft wood is treated, bare wood is primed, and the coats are rebuilt properly rather than freshened with one. The season for all of it runs from late spring to early September, and inside it we want a settled week rather than a hopeful forecast.

Above the old village, along the road towards Wadebridge, is the twentieth-century Port Isaac: bungalows, semis and a few small estates where many of the people who work in the village actually live. These are the ordinary jobs of the place, a rendered bungalow washed down and repainted from ladders, a three-bed semi redecorated through after a purchase, fascias and windows rebuilt on the side that faces the sea. The salt still comes up the hill, so the seaward render is washed before any paint goes on.

Whether it is a cottage on the harbour or a bungalow at the top, an exterior quote goes the same way. We come and walk round it with you. What moves the number is not the size of the house but the state of the surfaces, how much render needs cutting out and filling, how much painted timber there is, whether the walls are smooth or dashed, and how hard the back is to reach. We point out anything that should be fixed before paint, a blocked gutter, a cracked sill, failed pointing, because paint over a leak is money wasted. The quote sets out what it covers, and if the weather moves it we tell you.