Paint, stain and wallpaper

Walls, ceilings, woodwork and exteriors by coat; primer and block filler on a surface that will drink the first coat; decking and fence stain; wallpaper by roll and by drop; and the mixing work that comes before any of it — boxing tins together, tinting to a ratio, and lightening or darkening a batch that is not quite right.

What is underneath, which decides the coats far more than the colour does. Bare plaster, new board, a dark wall going light, or bare timber outdoors each take a different number of passes, and a spread rate printed on a tin is measured on a sealed surface rather than on any of those. Every page here asks what it is going onto and says which of its figures is the one that moves.

Preparing the surface — filling, sanding, stripping and the making good that a refurbishment spends more hours on than the painting.