Washed back. Sealed. Then colour.

Every side of a house is a different job.

Four walls, four climates, four rates of failure. Quoting a house as one number is how three sides get more than they need and one gets less.

What people ask about the outside.

The ones that come up on nearly every exterior, including the awkward one about rot.

• Does it have to be washed first?

  Yes. Chalk, dirt and salt stop a coating gripping, so paint over an unwashed surface and the film sits on the dirt rather than the house. The cheapest step to skip and the most expensive one to have skipped.

• How long does an exterior take?

  It depends on the height, the access and how much scraping the walls need, so dates come off the lap of the house rather than a table. Weather moves them, and when it does you hear the same morning.

• Do I need scaffolding?

  Single storey is usually ladders and a trestle. Two storey almost always needs scaffold, quoted as its own line because it is a real cost.

• Will you use a sprayer or a brush?

  Both, in different places. Spraying lays a better film on a big flat run of cladding and it is faster. Joinery, edges and anything next to a window is cut in by hand.

• How long will the paint last?

  Longer on the sheltered elevations than on the north and west, which take the sun. What shortens it is never the number of coats, it is whether the surface underneath was sound, dry and sealed.

• What about the garden?

  We tie plants back or cover them rather than trampling them, and anything that has to be cut we agree first. Drop sheets go over paths and decks, and the wash water stays off anything that will not take it.

• What if there is rot?

  You hear at the quote if it is visible, and the day it turns up if it is not. Soft timber does not hold paint, so painting it only hides the repair. Small sections we cut out and replace; anything structural is a builder rather than a painter.

• When should I ring?

  Earlier than feels necessary. Exteriors wait on the weather and everybody asks in the same few weeks once it turns, so a winter quote for spring work is the best planning there is.

While the gear is already up.

Access is most of the cost of working above ground level, so these four are worth quoting together and setting up for once rather than twice.

• Roof Painting

  Above the walls

  We clean it down, treat it and prime it before any colour. The one surface nobody looks at until everything under it is fresh.

• Fence and Deck

  The timber outside

  Stripped back and refinished, so the grain comes up instead of the flake. It dates a fresh house faster than anything else.

• Residential Painting

  Inside and out, one job

  The whole house run as one job, with one set of dates and one person answering for all of it.

• Plastering

  Cracks first

  Where a plaster or a solid plaster wall has opened up, we make it good before we coat it rather than filling it with paint.

The verdict that is not ours to give.

An exterior is judged two winters later rather than on the last afternoon. Bevan is the painter Parthenon Construction puts on its own houses, and the man who runs it says this.