Summer is for the inside, the quiet months are for everything else
In St Agnes the calendar is set by the crowds as much as by the weather, and the two pull against each other. The dry months that suit exterior painting are the months the village is full: the car parks fill by mid-morning, the lanes down to Trevaunance Cove are nose to tail, and half the houses have guests in them. Exterior work on a family house can still go ahead in summer, because nobody needs to move out for it. Exterior work on a let, or anything that needs a van outside a cafe for a week, is better planned for April and May before the schools break up, or September and October once they have gone back.
Winter is not dead time. From November to Easter the village is quiet, the lets stand empty for weeks and the pubs and cafes have their slack days. That is when interiors get done properly: whole houses rather than single rooms, wallpaper hung without a deadline, the ceilings and woodwork in a bar sorted while the trade is thin. Book it in the autumn rather than ringing in March hoping for a week before Easter.
Vans, lanes and ladders
The practical side of decorating in St Agnes is getting to the job and staying there. The old part of the village runs downhill from the centre towards the cove, and the terraces along the way, the Stippy Stappy among them, have no drive, no front garden and a lane laid out long before anyone owned a car. So we look at where the van can stand, whether materials can be dropped and the van moved, and which days the street is passable.
Access decides a good deal of an exterior price here, more than the size of the house. A rear elevation reached only through the neighbour's garden, a gable dropping away downhill, or a frontage on a lane that cannot take a tower without closing it, all take longer than a bungalow out towards the Beacon with a drive. If a tower or scaffold has to sit on the public highway, that is arranged with the council before the start date, not on the morning.
Cottages and family houses that are lived in all year
For all the surfboards and second homes, St Agnes is still mostly a place where people live. The miners' cottages and terraces near the centre are solid-walled stone under render or bare granite, with lime plaster inside, small rooms and deep window reveals that need a careful line where they meet the frame. They want breathable paint inside and out, and they reward the time spent filling and sanding uneven plaster before colour goes near it. Around them are the bungalows and semis that spread out from the village over the last century, in cement render or dash, quicker to paint and more forgiving of a modern emulsion.
Interior work for owner-occupiers is the steadiest part of our year here. A hall and stairs that have taken years of wetsuits and sandy boots, a kitchen left with bare plaster after the fitters, a ground floor done this year and the first floor next. We work in the house while you live in it, keep one or two rooms out of use at a time, and use low-odour water-based paints so a room painted in the day can be used that night.
The weather still has its say. The walls that look out to sea or across the cliffs towards Wheal Coates take the wind, salt and driving rain on the west and north sides long before the sheltered elevations show wear. Render there is washed down and left to dry before anything goes on, chalky paint is bound, and timber is primed where the weather has stripped it bare, the same preparation we do in Portreath.
Pubs, cafes, holiday lets and how we quote for them
A village this busy has a lot of trade premises for its size: pubs, cafes, surf shops, galleries and the places that feed the beach. Almost all of them want their decorating done when they are not trading: the quiet weeks of the year, early mornings before opening, or a phased job with the customer-facing rooms finished first. Kitchens and bar areas need finishes that stand up to washing down, and the plan is made backwards from the day you need to open.
Holiday lets run the same way. Between October and March there is time for a full repaint and the season's damage made good; in summer it is a scuffed hallway or a marked bedroom wall squeezed into a changeover, and we say honestly what fits the gap. For owners who are not in Cornwall we agree keys in advance and send photographs as rooms are finished.
Every job is looked at before it is priced: inside, the state of the walls and woodwork, any paper to strip and how much furniture there is; outside, each elevation checked by hand, where the ladders and van will stand, and which walls need scaffold. The quote sets out what it covers, the preparation allowed for and how many coats. Where the old paint comes off and shows a problem we could not see on the walk round, the extra work is priced and agreed before it is done.