Painter & decorator in Fulham.

Fulham ran itself from the river for well over a thousand years. The Bishop of London held the estate from Saxon times until 1973, and Fulham Palace still keeps its walled botanic garden, where seventeenth-century bishops were growing exotic trees from across the world, beside the church at the water's edge. That long tenancy set the tone for the housing — solid, generous, and maintained rather than replaced — and it describes the clients too. Fulham is a borough of caretakers, which suits the way we decorate.

East along the frontage, Bishops Park runs to Craven Cottage, Fulham's ground since 1896 and named for the eighteenth-century house that once stood there. Match days swallow the Stevenage Road streets for hours, so programmes nearby are planned around the fixture list from the outset — deliveries early, materials on site, noisy stages midweek. The stucco villas backing the park take decorative plaster repair as a standing item: cornicing, ceiling roses, and run-moulded profiles reinstated before anything is repainted.

South of the Palace, the district turns Victorian. Parsons Green — the old parson's common, now a triangle of cafés and crossings — anchors miles of terraced family streets running down towards Eel Brook Common and out along New King's Road and Wandsworth Bridge Road. These houses carry our core SW6 workload: halls, stairs, and landings that take the daily brunt of family life; bay-fronted reception rooms wanting wallpaper with the repeat centred; and kitchens resprayed or hand-painted rather than ripped out. Munster Village and the Broadway mansion blocks add the communal programmes and the tenancy turnarounds.

Clients here tend to know what they want and to notice what they get, so our process meets them where they are — one detailed survey, colours sampled on the wall rather than chosen from a fan deck, and a finish that stands up to the school run. It is steady, repeat work, and most of our Fulham diary arrives by referral from three streets over.