Windows, doors and balconies come first
Most of the houses at Trevone were built or rebuilt to look at the water, which means big windows, glazed doors, balcony rails and bargeboards on the elevation that takes the weather. Painted timber on that side does not get a gentle life. Salt sits on the sills, the sun bakes the south-facing frames, and the joints open up a fraction every winter so water gets behind the film. By the time the paint is visibly flaking the wood underneath has often been wet for a season.
So the exterior job here is not a quick coat over what is there. We rub the frames back to sound paint, cut out and treat any soft timber, prime the bare wood, and build the coats back up so the joints and end grain are sealed. A door or a run of sills done that way lasts; one flicked over on a dry afternoon in August does not. Fascias, soffits and timber cladding are done the same way, and balcony rails usually want it most of all because nobody looks at their underside.
If the outside of the house is being done we would rather do all of it in one visit: render, timber, the garage, the gate. Trevone is a good hour from Redruth by the A30 and the A39, and the sensible way to work that far from home is a whole exterior in a stay, or an exterior and the inside together, rather than a single door on its own. We will say so if a job is too small to justify the run, or suggest lining it up with other work in the parish.
Render, and how the quote for it is put together
People ask who paints render, and the short answer is that a decorator does, as long as the render itself is sound. The exposed faces at Trevone go chalky and green quickly, and hairline cracks appear where the render meets the window reveals. We wash the wall down first, stabilise chalky surfaces so the new coating has something to grip, cut out and fill the cracks, and then apply a proper masonry paint in full coats. On an older solid-walled cottage that coating has to let the wall breathe, or damp ends up trapped inside. Blown or hollow render is a builder's repair before we come, and we tap the walls on the walk round so you know which patches those are.
The quote for an exterior here follows that walk round rather than the floor area. What moves it is the condition of each elevation, how much timber there is and what state it is in, whether the seaward side needs a tower or scaffold, and where the van and the ladders can go. The lane down to the beach is narrow and in summer it is full, so access and parking are part of the conversation, not an afterthought. The quote lists each elevation and what is done to it, so two quotes for the same house can be read side by side.
Timing matters as much as price. Dry surfaces, mild nights and a settled run of days are the conditions exterior paint needs, and on this coast that mostly means late April to early October. Trevone's houses are busiest in exactly those months, so exteriors tend to land at either end of the season, the last weeks before Easter if the spring is kind and the first weeks after the October half term if it is not. Booking in the winter is how those slots get held.
The inside of a house that is empty half the year
A good share of Trevone is holiday homes and lets, and a house that sits closed from November to March behaves differently from one that is lived in. The heating is off or low, the air does not move, and the first person through the door at Easter finds a musty smell, a bloom of mould behind a wardrobe on the seaward wall and paint lifting in a bathroom corner. Paint alone will not fix that, and we do not pretend it will. What helps is dealing with the moisture first, some background heat and ventilation over the winter, and then a proper redecoration: mould treated and washed off, stained ceilings sealed, and the walls in the wet rooms given a durable emulsion that takes a wipe.
The same applies to the year-round houses on the slope above the beach and out along the road towards the village. A family home here is decorated a room or a floor at a time, and what decides how long a three-bed house takes is condition rather than size: how much filling the walls need, whether old paper wants stripping and the wall lining, how much woodwork there is and whether the gloss has yellowed. It is why we look before we quote.
Wallpaper is popular in the bedrooms of lets along this coast, and we hang it, but a papered wall in a house that stands cold for months and then fills with damp towels is a different proposition from one in a warm sitting room inland. We will say which papers will cope and which will lift at the seams by the second winter. For an owner who lives away, the keys come from the housekeeper or the agent, the work is arranged round the bookings, and a photograph of each finished room goes back so nobody has to drive down to check.