Treyarnon Bay, and what a painter and decorator has to allow for on this side of Trevose Head

Every house here has one elevation that faces the sea and takes almost everything. Treyarnon opens to the west, there is nothing between the beach and the ocean, and a south-westerly comes round the headland from Constantine carrying salt and rain straight onto the front of the property. That wall goes chalky, the paint on the sills and fascias lifts, and the glazing beads and door frames soften long before the back of the house shows any wear at all. Owners often notice it in the same way: the side they see from the garden looks new, and the side they see from the beach looks ten years older.

That is why a quote at Treyarnon does not treat four walls the same. We walk round, wash a patch on the seaward face to see what is under the salt film, press the timber for softness, and tap the render for hollow spots. The exposed elevation gets the full treatment: washed down, chalky paint stabilised, cracks cut and filled, rotten timber cut back and primed, then full coats of a masonry paint the wall can dry through. The sheltered sides may only need a wash and a coat. Charging for the whole house as though it were all seaward, or doing the seaward side as though it were sheltered, is how the job gets either overpriced or redone in two years.

It is also fair to say what paint cannot do. On the front of a house at Treyarnon a coating will need looking at sooner than the same coating in St Merryn village, however well it was put on. What good preparation buys is the difference between a repaint on a normal cycle and one every couple of summers, and that is a difference worth paying for once.

We will not pretend there is a high street. The houses at Treyarnon are mostly holiday lets and second homes, some of them the older bungalows and chalets from when the cove was first built on, some rebuilt with bigger windows towards the water, plus a few homes lived in all year. The hostel above the beach and the cafe are the only commercial buildings of any size, and the holiday park's chalets and static units make up the rest. Beyond that the lane runs back up to the plateau and St Merryn.

That mix decides the work. Lets want the inside made hard-wearing: sand-proof halls, bathrooms that take steam and daily wiping, bunk rooms that get knocked, a colour written down so the housekeeper can touch up between our visits. They also want the outside done in the gaps between bookings, which on this coast means the settled weeks either side of the season rather than the middle of it. A year-round home is a more ordinary job, a room or two at a time, an exterior every few years, but it still has the seaward wall to think about.

The lane down is narrow and the parking near the beach is limited and busy in summer, so we agree where the van can stand before we arrive rather than on the day. Where the only access to a seaward elevation is across a neighbour's ground or from the path above the beach, that is sorted out with them first and it goes into the quote as access time.

Treyarnon is roughly an hour from Redruth by the A30 and the A39. A single bedroom is not a sensible drive for either of us and we would say so on the phone. What does make sense is a property done in one stay: the outside first while the forecast holds, then the inside while the render cures, the garage or the balcony rails done because the ladders are already up, the woodwork and doors last. A week or a fortnight at the cove, keys from the housekeeper or the agent, a photo back as each part is finished, and the house handed over ready for the cleaner.

Timing is honest rather than optimistic. Exterior paint here needs dry surfaces, mild nights and a run of settled days, so late spring and early autumn are the realistic windows, and the winter is for the inside. A dry March week can carry the front of a bungalow; a wet one cannot, and we move the dates rather than coat a wall the rain will strip by morning. If you are letting, the quote sets out which weeks are exterior and which are interior so the calendar can be blocked around it.

The quote itself lists each elevation and what is done to it, then each room. It notes anything that is not decorating, a leaking gutter, failed pointing, a sill too far gone to fill, so those can be fixed before paint rather than hidden under it. On a cove that gets this much weather, paint over a leak is money thrown into the sea.