Decorating

Where painting concerns the coating, decorating concerns the room. A full decoration usually includes repairing cracked plaster and damaged cornice, preparing and painting ceilings, walls and joinery, and hanging lining paper or wallpaper, along with the less visible work of moving furniture, protecting floors and keeping the rest of the house clean.

• Full-room decoration: a single room, completed in one planned sequence.
• Whole-property decoration: a house decorated in phases, often while you live in it.
• Wallpaper: lining, setting out, pattern matching and delicate papers.
• Surface restoration: plaster, cornice and timber repairs before decoration.
• Preparation: surveying, cleaning, filling and priming.

Preparation is the largest part of most decorating projects and the part we are least willing to shorten. Paper and paint both magnify what lies beneath them, so cracks are cut out and filled, hollow plaster is found by tapping and repaired, and every surface is cleaned and primed as it needs.

Protection means more than dust sheets. Floors are covered with materials suited to the surface, doorways are sealed during sanding, and furniture that stays in the room is grouped, wrapped and kept clear of the work.

Craftsmanship shows in the details: wallpaper joins that disappear, a pattern that meets correctly across a chimney breast, woodwork laid off cleanly along its length.

Precision is planning as much as handwork — the order of trades, the starting point for a patterned paper, the day a room returns to use.

Finish is judged in the room, in its own light, before we call it complete.

A survey comes first: we look at each room with you, test the existing surfaces, and talk through colours, papers and how you use the house. The written specification that follows lists the repairs, preparation, materials and coats for every room, and a programme shows which rooms are out of use and when.

On site, protection goes down before tools come out. Dusty work — cutting out cracks, sanding filler, stripping old paper — is done early, with extraction and dust screens, so that finishing coats go on in clean conditions. Within each room the order is repairs, preparation and lining, then ceilings, walls and woodwork; where a room is papered, the woodwork is finished first so the paper is never exposed to paint. Rooms are tidied every evening, and furniture goes back only when the finish can take it.

Before handover we snag each room with you, then leave a record of the colours, papers, batch numbers and products used, with labelled leftovers for future repairs.

We specify by surface and use. Lime plaster wants a vapour-permeable finish; a hallway wants a wall paint that tolerates cleaning; a bedroom may suit the softness of a flat matt. If you have chosen a wallpaper, we check the manufacturer’s hanging instructions and the wall it is going on before quantities are ordered, since some papers need a lining, a particular paste or a primer that allows later removal. Where an interior designer has set the scheme, we work to their schedule and raise practical concerns early.