Anyone can roll a wall. The job is the line.
Two of us, one room at a time, across south Manchester. Our quote is written prep first and paint second — because that is the order the work happens in, and the order it fails in.
Quoting now for — late September, two rooms still open
the same corner in the same light — drawn, not photographed, so nothing here has been styled
Tap a colour and it stays picked for the whole page — the schedule below marks the rooms it goes in, and the sample corner in the fan deck repaints. The deck itself is where you can arrow between them.
- Day rate, two of us
- £340
- Average room
- 2–3 days
- Tester pots
- we bring six, free
- Next start
- three weeks
- Telephone
- 0161 496 0418
The schedule
Every quote is a room-by-room spec
Not one number for “the house”. You get the surface, the paint, the finish and the days, per room, before anyone opens a tin.
Colour schedule · sheet 1 of 1Marbury Decorating
Job MB 1184
Copy 1 — yours to keep
Fourteen days on site, priced at the day rate on the strip above. Nothing gets added to this sheet on site without a new line on it and your say-so — that is what the second copy is for.
R. MarburyPriced and signed · checked D.M.
The fan deck
Tap a chip, the room repaints
The six colours we carry, on the corner from the top of the page. A chip is a guess; a tester on your wall for a week is the answer.
The lineWhite wall to white ceiling is the hardest cut there is: same colour, different sheen, and the eye finds every wobble.
The lineWarm enough to hide a filled crack, light enough to show a badly filled one. Two coats.
The lineA kitchen colour. Cut in along the worktop after the caulk has gone off, never before.
The lineReads green in a north room at nine at night. That is what the week of testers is for.
The lineCut in by hand against the ceiling, no tape. Two coats, and the line is the job.
The lineA dark this deep goes over a tinted undercoat, or you see the roller in the third coat.
Where it goes on your schedule Ceilings in the hall, the front room and the kitchen, and the front-room skirting and architrave in satinwood. Walls all the way up the hall, stairs and landing. Kitchen walls, in the wipeable matt. The kitchen window board in eggshell, and the back bedroom walls once the plasterer has been. Front room walls. The hall spindles and handrail, denibbed between coats.
Whichever chip, the prep is the same: cracks cut out and filled in two passes, every junction caulked, then two full coats — and the quote says so before the colour is even chosen.
Prep
The cracks come back by Christmas
If a quote does not say what happens before the paint, the honest reading is that nothing does. Here is ours, in the order we do it.
-
Everything out, everything down
Furniture to the middle and sheeted, floors covered edge to edge, sockets and handles off rather than masked round. We take the door furniture off too, which is the bit most people notice afterwards.
-
Cracks cut out, not filled over
A settlement crack painted over is a crack you will see again in about nine months. We open it, fill it in two passes, and sand it flush. If a wall needs a plasterer rather than filler we say so and quote it separately — it is not our trade and we do not pretend.
-
Caulk every junction
Skirting to wall, architrave to wall, coving to ceiling. It is a slow, boring hour per room and it is the single difference between a room that looks decorated and a room that looks painted.
-
Then, and only then, paint
Mist coat on new plaster, two full coats everywhere else, cut in by brush rather than tape. Tape gives a straight line on a straight wall, and there are no straight walls in a Victorian terrace.
Who turns up
The two people who quoted it
Marbury is Rob and Dee. We have worked together eleven years and we do not subcontract. The person who walks round your house with a notebook is one of the two people who will be in it.
We take one job at a time. That is why the wait is three weeks and why we will not start your hall and then disappear to somebody's shop for a fortnight — a thing that happened to us as customers once, and is the reason the firm works the way it does.
We are in at eight and out by five, and the room is put back and liveable every evening. If your kitchen is being done you will still be able to cook in it that night.
Job sheet · the six we get asked Marbury Decorating
- Years trading
- since 2015
- People on site
- Rob and Dee
- Public liability, certificate on request
- £2m
- Rooms last year
- 68
- Repaints under warranty
- 1
- Paint we buy, receipts shown
- trade tins, at cost
Every line on this sheet is something you can ask us to put in front of you.
Start here
Tell us the room
We come and look, measure, and send the schedule as a written spec. No charge and no salesman, because there isn't one.
Quickest is the phone — 0161 496 0418. Rob picks up, or rings back the same evening.
If it is easier to write it down, the form does the same job. Tell us roughly how many rooms and whether the woodwork is going too, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right size of firm for it.
We are not, for what it is worth, the cheapest quote you will get. We are usually the only one that says what the prep is.
Survey slip · one line a roomMarbury Decorating
Comes back as
a written schedule
One line a room, filled in after we have walked round it. Four questions is all we need to get there.