Painters & Decorators in Notting Hill

The staircase is the hard part

People think of a house repaint as a set of rooms. In a Notting Hill terrace the rooms are the straightforward bit. What takes the time is the vertical spine running through the middle of the house: four flights, the balustrade, the handrail, the landings, and a stairwell wall that is three storeys tall and has to be reached safely and painted without a visible join.

It is also the part everyone sees every day and the part that takes the most punishment. So it gets a harder-wearing, washable specification than the bedrooms do, and it gets the most access equipment. If a quote for a whole house does not say anything about the stairwell, that is worth asking about.

The detail that makes the house

Cornice, ceiling roses, picture rails, deep skirtings, panelled doors. They are the reason these houses look the way they do and they are the first casualty of a rushed job. Every previous decorator has left a coat behind, and after enough of them the crisp Victorian profile turns into a soft, rounded suggestion of itself.

Where that has happened we cut the build-up back and reinstate the edge by hand before recoating. It is slow work and there is no shortcut, but it is the difference between a house that has been painted and a house that has been restored.

Living upstairs while we work downstairs

Most of these jobs run with the family still in the house, which is the whole reason we work in sections rather than opening the place up. You keep floors that function. Working areas are contained and sheeted, sanding dust is taken out at source, and each area is cleared at the end of the day rather than left mid-job.

Access on residential W11 streets is arranged before the start date, not on the morning. Scaffold, where the exterior needs it, goes through contractors we have worked with for years. Parking suspensions and any council licences are down to you or your agent to arrange, and those are worth starting early.

What the quote actually covers

We price after walking the house, because the things that move the number are things you cannot see from a room count: how sound the existing coatings are, how much reinstatement the mouldings need, whether the stairwell can be reached off towers or wants a proper scaffold. You get that in writing, free, with no obligation.

If the budget will not stretch to the whole house at once, say so at the visit. It is nearly always better to phase the work — circulation and anything with a damp or decay problem first, cosmetic rooms later — than to thin the preparation everywhere so one number fits.

Around Notting Hill

We also work in Kensington, Chelsea and Fulham, and out through Paddington, Wandsworth, Putney and Richmond. More on the work itself: interior painting, exterior painting and wallpaper hanging.