What do they do Lorraine O'Conaill, p ainter/decoratorLorraine O'Conaill has been decorating since her gran put a roll of wallpaper into her hand, she tells Bernice Harrison
The thing about discovering a great painter decorator is that once you've recommended him (and it's usually a him) to a couple of friends and they've passed his name on, the next time you want a room painted your once work-hungry painter can't fit you in until sometime after hell freezes over.
It probably explains why clever (but vastly annoying people) clam up when asked who did the room and mutter something about "a great little man".
One painter/decorator who is unlikely to ever be described that way is Lorraine O'Conaill. She's one of the few solo female contractors working in the business.
Having trained and worked with New Décor Contractors in Arklow, she set up on her own six months ago.
It's oddly refreshing to find a woman working in this area who is not concentrating on gilding, stencilling and the other range of fancy paint treatments. She's more your hall, stairs and landing type of painter.
"I think people think of painters as hairy-assed messy types, who leave tea bags on your draining board," says the soft-spoken Glaswegian who came to Ireland three years ago. She says she's been decorating since she was a teenager ("I blame my gran for putting a roll of wallpaper in my hand when I was 14") and has always painted and decorated for friends.
Getting the opportunity to formally train with the Arklow company set the Dublin-based woman on her current career path.
Work has come mostly by word of mouth, and a recent job saw her painting a large four-bedroom house including conservatory from top to bottom. "The people just gave me the keys and went on holidays," she says, adding that there's a lot of trust involved in getting someone into your home to do a job.
"Women usually make the decisions when it comes to decorating a room, what colour it'll be and who to get in," she says. "The people I've worked for seem to be happy to get a woman in to do the job."
There haven't been as many wallpapering as paint jobs - a story that'll be familiar to all contractors in the business. Interior designers keep predicting the comeback of wallpaper but it's been slow in coming.
"A really common question I get is whether you can paint over wallpaper - and of course you can, you just have to be careful to use the right paint if the paper is vinyl," she says.
Prepping the job is vital, she says, as is using good quality paint. "In the industry you do see people using poor quality paint; apart from anything else, it's so thin it's too messy," she says.
Clients are advised to buy sample pots and not just to paint one area of the room with the colour but to brush in on other walls.
Costing a job depends on a number of factors, such as the preparation and number of coats of paint required, but the average livingroom would cost somewhere around €350 to €400, excluding paint.
Lorraine O'Conaill, Décorum Telephone 01 2891409
This column appears fortnightly
