Send the calendar first
The first thing we ask an owner in St Merryn for is the list of bookings, because the calendar decides the job. A let here is full from Easter to the end of October with a few days' gap at half term, and the long empty stretch is November to March. That is when the full repaint, the bathrooms, the woodwork and the outside belong, handed back to the housekeeper before the first spring guests. In season the work is what fits between a Saturday and a Saturday: a scuffed hall, a bedroom that has taken a knock, a door before the next family arrives.
Most owners are not here. The keys come from the housekeeper or the agent, the quote goes by email and sets out what it covers, and a photograph goes back as each room is finished. We leave the place ready for the cleaner, and if we find a plumber's or a builder's job we say so rather than paint over it.
It is worth being straight about the distance. St Merryn is around an hour from Redruth by the A30 and the A39, further than most towns we cover, so a single small job is a long run for both of us and we would say so. What makes sense is a whole property inside and out, a group of lets done in the same weeks, or a run of rooms planned together so the van is in the parish for a stretch.
The village is one job, the coves are another
The village itself, around the church and the pubs, has more year-round houses than the coast does: older stone and slate cottages in the middle, then a broad spread of twentieth-century bungalows and houses, and newer estates on the edges. These are ordinary decorating jobs, a family home redone room by room, a bungalow washed down and coated from ladders. Parking is easier than at the beaches and the rooms are a normal size, so the work runs at a normal pace.
Head out on the lanes to Harlyn, Trevone, Treyarnon and Mother Ivey's Bay and the houses change. Out there it is mostly holiday homes and lets, many built or rebuilt in recent decades with big windows towards the sea, plus the chalets and lodges of the holiday parks. There is very little between those houses and the Atlantic. The wind comes across Trevose Head with nothing to slow it, and the salt lands on every elevation, not only the one that faces the water. A house at Harlyn needs its outside looked at more often than the same house in the village, and the seaward timber more often still.
Weather on an open plateau
St Merryn parish is flat, open farmland on top of the cliffs, with few trees and no hills to hide behind. The south-westerlies cross it unbroken and a north-westerly straight off the sea is worse. Render goes chalky and green on the exposed faces within a few years, hairline cracks let the rain in behind, and fascias, soffits and window frames on the coast side are where paint fails first. None of that is unusual for north Cornwall; it just happens faster here than a few miles inland at Wadebridge.
So an exterior quote starts with a walk round. We wash a patch to see what the surface really is under the salt, check for blown render and soft timber, and note which elevations take the weather, because the quote treats them differently. Then the sound render is washed down, cracks cut out and filled, chalky paint stabilised, and a masonry paint the wall can dry through goes on in full coats. On an older solid wall that breathable finish is not optional.
The best time of year for exterior painting in Cornwall is late spring to early September, when surfaces are dry and the nights stay mild, and that is exactly when a St Merryn let is full. The honest answer is to book the outside for the settled weeks either side of the season, late April into May or September into early October, and to book it early, because those weeks go quickly. A dry week in March can carry a small job. A wet one cannot, and we tell you when the forecast has moved the dates.
Inside: sand, wet coats and walls that get wiped
The inside of a beach house takes a particular kind of wear. Sand comes in on every foot, wetsuits and towels hang in the hall, and the housekeeper wipes the walls down between every change. Halls, stairs, bathrooms and bunk rooms want a durable emulsion that takes a wash and a touch-up without flashing, in a colour noted down so the next coat matches. Wallpapered feature walls are popular in lets here and we hang them, but on a wall that will be wiped and knocked we say which papers will survive.
For a family home in the village, the usual question is what decides the cost of painting a three-bed house. Mostly it is condition, not floor area: how much filling and sanding the walls need, whether old paper has to come off and the wall lined, how much woodwork there is and the state of the gloss, and whether the ceilings are stained. We look before we quote, and the quote lists the rooms and what is done in each so it can be compared like for like.