Painting and decorating, prepped for salt air.

What’s included

• Interior: full prep, filler, sand, prime and two-coat topcoat
• Exterior: salt-primer specification on any exposed timber - standard on cliff properties
• Georgian sash windows: full paint prep including staff bead removal, silicone-free putty check, and reglazing bead touch-up
• Trim, skirting, architrave, door edges cut in clean
• Dust sheets and hard-surface protection as standard - nothing splashed on your floor
• Water-based topcoats where appropriate; oil-based on exterior high-exposure

Honest pricing

£95 call-out, first hour included, £45 per hour after that - a single door touch-up or a full room, you’re billed for the hours worked beyond the first.

The Dover angle

Dover salt air is the reason exterior paint jobs fail here faster than inland. The salt sits on the paint film, absorbs moisture, and breaks the film’s barrier. Water then gets under and lifts the whole system off the timber. On the cliff-top belt (St Margaret’s, Kingsdown, West Cliffe) a standard exterior job that would last eight years inland is on a three-to-four year cycle if it’s not properly specced.

The fix is a salt-tolerant primer (Zinsser Coverstain or equivalent) as the base coat, aggressive prep of the existing film to bare timber where it’s already lifting, and an oil-based topcoat on high-exposure elevations. Water-based topcoats are fine on internal-facing woodwork; they don’t last on Channel-facing sills.

Where we stop - and who we hand you to

What we don’t do: full wallpaper hangs (specialist), spray-application of large ceilings (specialist), or listed-building paint schemes on Grade II* properties (heritage decorator). We’ll say so up front.

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