Straight answers. No brochure.

The five that matter.

Five questions. The practical ones come after.

• Is the quote the price, or the opening bid?

  It is the price. Nobody writes a number until we have stood in the room and looked at what is under the existing paint.

  What would change it is finding something that could not be seen: damp behind a wall, a bad repair, timber past sealing. You hear about it the day it turns up, with the options, before any extra work starts.

• What makes a job run over?

  Three things, and only one is weather. The first is the surface being worse than it looked. The second is drying: a coat that has not gone off will not take the next.

  The third is worth asking any painter: what else they have on. Not the number of jobs, but who is answerable for yours, and whether you hear a date is moving before it moves.

• Will you disappear halfway through?

  The way it happens is not deliberate: a bigger job appears, the crew splits, and your house becomes the one that gets the odd afternoon.

  What stops it here is that the owner is on the tools. Whoever decides what gets taken on has to be on it every morning. If the honest answer is a month away, you hear that at the quote rather than being squeezed in and abandoned in week two.

  And if any part of a job ever needs somebody outside this business, you are told who and when before it happens, rather than finding a name you do not recognise on your driveway.

• Will I get the same people every day?

  Yes. Bevan Cochrane, who owns it, and Jordon McGregor, qualified. The same two faces on the second morning as the first, so you explain the job once and the person you explained it to is holding the brush.

  The trade-off is honest: a bigger outfit can put five on a house and be gone in a week. This one takes longer, and the same eyes have been over every surface.

• Can I change the colour halfway?

  Up to a point. Before anything is opened, freely. After the first coat is on, going lighter usually costs an extra coat and going much darker often does not.

  The better move is to decide late and decide once: put the real colour on a large card, stand it against the wall it is going on, and look morning and evening. Colours move enormously between north and south facing rooms.

What you get told, and when.

Most of the worry about having work done is not the work, it is not knowing where it is up to.

Having us in the house.

Eight small ones. Keys, the dog, the parking, and what time the van turns up.

• Do you need a key?

  Only if you want us there when you are not. Plenty of jobs run with somebody home and plenty run on a key or a lockbox. We agree which before the first morning.

• What about the dog?

  Tell us on the first morning and we shut doors behind us without being asked. The two real risks are a gate left open while gear is carried in and a dog through a wet skirting board, both avoidable if we know.

• Where does everything go while you are working?

  Into the middle of the room and under cover, unless it is empty enough to work around. We move the wardrobes, beds and sofas. Worth doing yourself the night before: anything sentimental or with a plug on it.

• Where will you park?

  On the street unless you would rather we did not, and off the drive if you need it. Say if there is a permit zone or a shared drive: day one is easier than day four.

• What time do you start?

  Usually between seven thirty and eight. If that is too early because somebody is sleeping or works nights, say so and it moves.

• Will there be a trailer outside?

  A van, and on an exterior sometimes scaffolding or a trestle. No skip: a painting job produces surprisingly little rubbish and what there is leaves in the van at the end of each day.

• Do I need to tell the neighbours?

  On an interior, no. On an exterior it is worth a word, particularly with a shared boundary or scaffolding up for a week.

• Can I just leave you to it?

  Yes, and most people do after the first day or two. The only thing worth being around for is the start of each new room, in case something needs a decision.

Money, dates and the awkward ones.

Six that come up at the end of a phone call, usually with an apology in front of them.

• Why is there no price list?

  Because a square metre rate would be a guess, and always wrong in the same direction. Two rooms of identical size can be a day apart depending on what is under the paint, and no number from a description knows which yours is.

  A rate per square metre also implies the money is in the paint, when most of it is labour: preparing, protecting, setting up.

• Why should I not just take the cheapest quote?

  Sometimes you should, and if two quotes describe the same work take the lower one. The problem is that they usually do not, and the difference is almost always in preparation, the part you cannot inspect afterwards.

  Read both for what each says about washing, filling, sanding and sealing, and how many coats go on what. If one is silent on all of that, the gap between the numbers is your answer.

• What happens if it rains for a fortnight?

  On an exterior we stop, and you hear it from us. Nobody can coat wet cladding, and a painter who works through it is producing a finish that will fail early.

  Interiors carry on regardless, which is why a job with both often gets sequenced so there is inside work to move to.

• What if I have already bought the paint?

  Fine, and it happens often. We check whether it is right for that surface and whether there is enough. Interior wall paint bought for a bathroom ceiling is the common one, and finding it in the shed beats finding it on a wall.

  Where the product suits the job it goes straight on. Where it does not, we tell you what it is actually good for so it does not get wasted.

• Is it worth doing it in stages?

  Almost never, if the whole thing needs doing. Each stage pays again for setting up and moving furniture, and the joins between stages tend to show, because paint from two different years is two different colours.

  The exception is a genuine budget ceiling. If it comes down to half a house done properly or all of it done thinly, take the half.

• How do I know the prep actually happened?

  Look at it before the paint goes on. That is the honest answer and the only one worth anything: a prepared wall and an unprepared one are identical once painted, and completely different the day before.

  Run a hand across it. It should find nothing. Look along it towards a window rather than at it, and every ridge, patch and old seam shows as a shadow. A minute, and the most useful thing you can do.

Before you ring.

Most enquiries die in the thirty seconds before anybody picks up the phone. Six answers so yours does not.

• Is my job too small to bother you with?

  Ring and ask rather than deciding on our behalf. A small job on a house that might want more later is a sensible place to start, and if it is not worth a visit we say so.

• What do I actually say?

  What you can see, and where. That is enough. "The hallway is marked up and there are cracks above two doors" gets you further than any amount of working out which trade it belongs to. Naming it is our job.

• Can I just send photos?

  Send them, and they genuinely help. What they cannot do is show what is under the existing paint. Photographs make the visit shorter rather than unnecessary.

• How long does the visit take?

  Usually half an hour for a room or two, longer for a whole house or an exterior.

• Does somebody need to be home for it?

  For an interior, yes, because half of it is questions about how you use the rooms. For an exterior, not necessarily, as long as there is access and somebody to talk to afterwards.

• What if I am only getting numbers for insurance?

  Say so and we handle it that way. Repair work through an assessor is a real share of what this business does, so the paperwork is familiar, and the standard does not change because somebody else is paying.