Interior and exterior decoration on private homes.

Ceilings, walls, woodwork and stairwells. Full house repaints, single rooms, and first decoration of new or newly plastered work.

New plaster is treated differently from previously painted walls, and both are treated differently again from surfaces carrying stains, nicotine or a strong existing colour. All of that is assessed at the site visit and specified in the quotation, because it is what determines how many coats a room actually needs.

Occupied homes are worked through room by room, in an order that keeps as much of the house in use as possible.

Doors, frames, skirting, architrave, stairs, windows and built-in furniture.

Woodwork is where the difference between a competent job and a good one is most visible, and it is almost entirely down to preparation — bare timber knotted and primed, sound existing coatings keyed back, and sanding between coats rather than only before them. Fittings are removed where removal gives a better result than cutting around them.

Render, masonry, fascia, soffit, guttering, windows, doors and railings.

Exteriors in Donegal take more weather than most of the country, and the failure is almost always at the preparation stage rather than in the coating. Surfaces are cleaned down, loose and failing material removed, bare and exposed areas primed, and the existing coating assessed for adhesion before anything goes over it.

Work is scheduled around conditions, not around the calendar. Painting an exterior into damp or falling temperatures produces a finish that fails early, so if the weather does not allow it the job moves. You will be told, and you will be told early.

Vacant and recently renovated houses are a large part of the work in this part of Donegal, and an empty property is a different job from an occupied one — faster to work through, easier to protect, and better suited to spraying where spraying is appropriate.

If you are refurbishing a house before moving in, letting it, or bringing a long-vacant property back into use, it is worth getting the decoration quoted early. It is the last trade in and the one most often squeezed at the end of a programme.

Regular decoration for letting agents, holiday-home owners and property managers, on a scheduled basis or between tenancies.

Repeat work is quoted on a per-property basis with a standing specification, so the same rooms are done to the same standard each time without a fresh survey on every visit.