A large lounge in pale sage green with a deep bay window, a panelled ceiling and a crystal chandelier

Inside the house

Interior decoration

Most of what makes an interior look right happened before the topcoat went on. The paint is the last two days of the job and the least skilled part of it. What you are paying for is the filling, the flatting and the cutting in.

Get a free quote 07538 869832

The job in the pictureBay-windowed lounge in pale sage

What it covers

The work itself

Walls and ceilings, new plaster or repaint
Skirting, architrave, doors, window boards and stairs
Kitchens and bathrooms, in coatings that will take the moisture
Staircases, landings and hallways — the awkward ones
Filling, making good and small plaster repairs
New-build snagging and mist coats on fresh plaster

How I do it

How I actually do it

In order. The parts you cannot see once it is finished are the parts that decide whether it lasts.

Everything gets covered, then I look properly
Sheets down and furniture moved or covered before anything else. Then I go round the room in a raking light with a pencil and mark every dent, nail hole, cracked joint and proud tape line. In ordinary light you will miss half of them; in the finished job you will see all of them.
Fill, and fill again
Filler shrinks back as it dries, so anything deeper than a scuff wants a second pass. One heavy fill that sinks is the commonest reason a repainted wall still looks tired.
Flatted with the extractor running
Filler and old coatings sanded back with dust extraction at the pad, so the dust ends up in the machine and not through the house. See the dustless sanding page — it is the reason people can stay put while I am working.
Caulk the lines that should be straight
The joint where skirting meets wall, architrave meets plaster, coving meets ceiling. Caulked and cut in, those read as one crisp line. Left open, they read as a gap however good the paint is.
Primer where it earns its place
Bare filler, new plaster, bare timber, water stains and anything I do not trust to hold a topcoat. Not everywhere, as a matter of routine — on the places that need it, for a reason I can give you.
Two coats, cut in by hand
Ceilings, then walls, then woodwork last so nothing lands on a finished surface. Edges cut in with a brush rather than masked, because tape on a fresh wall lifts it.
Cleared, and looked over with you
Covers up, everything back where it was, and you look it over with me before I go. Anything you are not happy with I put right then, not on a snagging visit three weeks later.

What's included

What you get for the money

Preparation: Fill, flat, caulk, spot-prime
Sanding: Dust-extracted at the pad
Coats: Two, plus primer where needed
Order of work: Ceilings, walls, woodwork
Edges: Cut in by hand, not taped
You in the house: Yes, room by room
Daily update: Photographs at the end of every day
Typical three-bed, whole house: To confirm

Straight answers

What it will not do

Worth reading before you book anybody, not just me. A page that only says yes is a page nobody believes.

I cannot make a bad wall flat with paint. Where plaster has blown or a ceiling is cracked across, that is a plastering job first, and I will tell you before I start rather than paint over it and let you find out.
Damp is not a decorating problem. If a wall is wet, paint traps it and the coating fails; the cause needs finding first. I will say what I can see and be honest that finding it is somebody else’s trade.
New plaster needs to be dry through before it takes a mist coat. That is weeks, not days, and rushing it shows up as patchy suction for the life of the paint.
Fresh emulsion is dry to the touch quickly and hard much later. Skirtings want a few days before things get pushed back against them.
I work on my own, so I do one job at a time and I am not on three sites at once. It means the dates are real. It also means I cannot start next week if next week is already somebody else’s.

My own photographs