Painter in Hawthorn East, VIC

Melbourne's eastern and inner south-eastern suburbs, from Box Hill, Blackburn and Doncaster through Balwyn, Kew and Camberwell to Richmond, Toorak, Malvern, Prahran and Caulfield. All 25 suburbs are listed on the service areas page. If yours is not there, ask anyway, because the list is where the work goes most often rather than a fence.

Yes. Cracks, holes, water damaged patches and loose ceiling sheets are repaired and sanded before the paint goes on, so the repair and the painting are planned as one job rather than two trades working around each other. Most repaints in older houses need some of this, and it goes on the quote as its own line.

Yes, carpentry and fixing is one of the services, and it usually goes alongside the painting. Rotten weatherboards, soft window sills, loose skirting, sticking doors and broken fence palings are the common ones. Mention them when you call so they are in the quote rather than found on the day.

Yes. Painting and plaster repairs after a leak, a storm or an impact are one of the services. If you have a claim number or an assessor's report, send it with your enquiry and the quote is written against the same items, which makes the two easy to compare.

Yes. You get it in writing before any paint is bought, listing the rooms or walls, the repairs, the preparation and the number of coats. If something changes once work starts, such as rot under a window sill, it is written down and you decide before it is done.

Which rooms or which sides of the house, roughly how big they are, and a few photos taken in daylight. Point out anything flaking, cracked or stained, because preparation changes a quote more than size does. For outside work, say whether the house is single or double storey.

We can talk through what tends to work on the house you have and how a colour behaves on that surface in that light. A sample patch on the actual wall is the most reliable way to decide, and it is worth doing before a full tin is bought. The final choice is always yours.

No, though clearing small and fragile things off shelves and walls helps. Larger furniture is moved to the middle of the room and covered, and floors are covered before anything is opened. Tell us about anything that cannot be moved, such as a piano or built in shelving.

Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 5:30pm. If you live in an apartment or a townhouse with set hours for trades, tell us when you call and the work days are planned inside them.

It depends on the preparation more than the painting, so the honest answer comes with the quote rather than before it. A bedroom with sound walls is a different job from one with cracked plaster and a stained ceiling. Outside work also depends on the weather, because paint needs dry surfaces and mild days to go on well.

Work on the outside stops while the surfaces are wet, because paint put over damp timber or render does not hold. The day is moved rather than pushed through, and inside work can sometimes fill the gap. We let you know as soon as a day has to move.

It can be. Paint on houses built before the 1970s may contain lead, and that changes how it should be prepared, because dry sanding it spreads the dust. Tell us roughly when the house was built and we will talk it through before anything is quoted.