Papering and painting walls that were never flat
The older houses in and around the village, the cottages by the church, the farmhouses and the converted barns on the lanes, are slate and stone under lime plaster, and none of the walls are square. Corners are rounded, window reveals run out of true, and the plaster follows the stone behind it. That changes how the job is done. Lines are struck from a level rather than from the ceiling, filling is done with something that moves with the wall, and old distemper or layered emulsion is sealed before anything goes over it, otherwise the new coat pulls the old one off in patches.
Wallpaper comes up a lot here, on a chimney breast, a bedroom wall, a hall. On an uneven old wall the paper only looks as good as what is under it, so the wall is filled, sanded and lined first, and the pattern is set out from the centre so it reads straight to the eye even where the corners are not. Thick papers and small repeats forgive an old wall; a big geometric on a wall that leans does not, and we say so before it is ordered. Stripping old paper from lime plaster is slow work, because a steamer used hard brings the plaster with it.
What decides the cost of doing a house like this through is condition, not the number of rooms: how much filling and sealing the walls need, whether paper has to come off and the walls lined, the state of the woodwork after decades of gloss, and whether a ceiling is stained. Two cottages of the same size on the same lane can be a week apart. We look at every room before quoting, and the quote lists what is done in each.
Inland enough to be different, not inland enough to skip the wash
St Issey sits a few miles back from the open coast, on higher ground between the Camel estuary and the beaches beyond Padstow. That few miles matters. The salt haze that coats every wall at Harlyn is thinner here, the wind has hedges and farm buildings to break it, and a rendered wall in the village keeps its paint longer than the same wall at the coast. It is still north Cornwall, though. The south-westerlies come across the fields with rain in them, the north side of a house goes green through the winter, and the sunny gable chalks.
So exteriors here are done the same way as at the coast, with a little more slack in the calendar. The render is washed down first, because there is still salt on it and paint over salt lifts, cracks are cut out and filled, chalky paint is stabilised, and a masonry paint the wall can dry through goes on in full coats. On the old slate-rubble walls that breathable finish is the whole point: a sealed coating on a solid wall holds the winter's water in until it blows the render off in spring. Bare stone with sound pointing is left alone. Painted timber, the sashes, doors, fascias and the boarded gables on the barns, is rubbed back to sound paint, soft wood treated, bare wood primed, and the coats rebuilt.
Who paints render? A decorator, unless it is blown. We tap the wall on the walk round; hollow or lifting patches are a plasterer's repair before we come, chalking, cracking and green growth are ours. The best time of year for it is late spring to early September, when the walls are dry and the nights stay mild, and the village gives a settled week a little more often than the cliffs do. Farm buildings, garages and gates are done in the same visit so the ladders only go up once, and we tell you straight if a wet week has moved the dates.
A village people live in, on a road to a place they visit
Unlike the coast, most of St Issey is lived in all year. There are lets and second homes, particularly in the converted barns, and those run through the keyholder in the empty months with a photograph back as each room is finished. But the ordinary job here is a family home: a farmhouse kitchen and hall before Christmas, a whole cottage redecorated after a purchase, a bungalow on the edge of the village washed down and coated over a settled week in the summer holidays. Parking is easier than anywhere on the coast, so the work runs at a normal pace.
The one thing to plan round is the road. The A389 through the village carries the traffic to Padstow, and on a summer Saturday it is slow, so we unload early and the van goes off the road onto the drive or wherever we have agreed. For the cottages that open straight onto the lane the front is done from a ladder with a cone out and a word with the neighbours, and the back is reached through the house.
St Issey is about an hour from Redruth by the A30 and the A39, further than most of the towns we cover, and that shapes what is worth the run. A whole house inside and out, a farmhouse done room by room over a stay, or work planned alongside a neighbour's so the van is in the village for a week: those are worth it. A single door on its own is a long way to come, and we would rather say so than quote badly for it.