Painting your Yalova property while you live abroad

The first thing we need from you is not a description of the work. It is one written message naming the person who can open the property, with their number. That message is the only authority we accept for access, and it protects you as much as it helps us: if anyone else offers to let us in, the answer is no until you write.

The survey itself is one visit. We go through the property with that person present, measure the surfaces, and photograph the condition we found. Every wall that will be worked on, the ceilings, the window reveals, the balcony, the damp patches, the cracks, the places where the previous coat has failed. Those photographs reach you in the same message thread as everything else, before any price is discussed, so what you are reading is your own property rather than a description of it.

What you then receive is a written quote, not a figure. It says which rooms or elevations are covered, what happens to each surface before any paint goes on, which products are used and in which finish, labour and materials as separate lines, how many working days it takes and what is excluded. Anything the survey could not reach, a sealed ceiling void or a wall behind a fitted wardrobe, is written down as unseen rather than quietly priced as sound.

Approval is a written step, not a phone call. You get the quote, you ask whatever you want to ask in the thread, and the reply in which you accept it is what starts the work. Nothing is ordered, opened up or painted before that. If something has to change once the crew is inside, a wall that will not take the coat, a ceiling worse than it photographed, you get the photograph and the new line in writing and the work waits for your answer.

Colour is what goes wrong most often at a distance, because a colour on a screen is not the colour on your wall. So we do not ask you to choose from a screen. We paint a sample of the colour you are considering on your own wall, in the room it is meant for, let it dry, and photograph it in daylight. You are looking at your paint, on your plaster, in your window light. If it is not what you had in mind, we paint the next one.

The colour is then confirmed in writing by its code, next to the photograph of the sample, so there is no argument in week three about which of three greys was agreed. The finish is written down with it. Matt, silk and satin look almost identical on a card and completely different down a long hallway wall in afternoon light.

We accept a key from one person: the one you named in writing. Not from a neighbour who happens to be on the landing, not from somebody who says they are family, not from a caretaker you have not introduced to us yourself. If the person has to change, you write again and the new name replaces the old one.

When the key is handed over we confirm it in the thread with the date and a photograph of the key as we received it. We do not cut copies, for any reason. While the job runs it stays with the person responsible for your job rather than circulating among the crew.

At the end the key goes back to the same person, unless you write and tell us to hand it to somebody else, and the return is confirmed in the thread exactly the way the receipt was. What that leaves you holding is a written record of who had your key and between which dates, which is the thing you actually want if a question about access ever comes up.

On a job the owner can see, most of the work speaks for itself. On a job the owner cannot see, the preparation is invisible by the end, because everything honest that happens to a wall gets covered by the next coat. So the preparation is photographed while it is still visible, and the photographs carry their dates.

The sequence for each area is the same: as found, stripped and filled, primed, first coat, finished. Room shots are taken from the same spot each time so the images stack and you can compare them instead of working out which wall you are looking at. Close range photographs of every repair are taken before it is covered, because after that they cannot be taken at all.

At handover you can ask for a video walkthrough of the whole property in a single pass, and you will get it. The leftover tins are photographed with their labels readable and left on site rather than taken away, so in two years a touch up can be matched to the same product, the same colour code and the same finish without anybody guessing.

Payment is a bank transfer from your own account to a Turkish business account, against an invoice. The invoice carries the scope, the date and the amount, so what you paid for is written on a document rather than remembered from a conversation. Nothing is settled in cash handed to a stranger, and we do not ask anybody to carry money for you.

The payment is staged, and the stages are tied to the photo report. You release each one against the evidence for the work it covers, not against a promise that the work is coming. Where those stages fall is written into the quote before the first day on site, so you know from the start where your decision points are.

If you would rather not transfer internationally at all, somebody in Yalova can pay locally on your behalf: a relative, a letting agent, the same person who holds your key. That works on the same condition as access does, that you name them in writing as authorised to pay for you. This page carries no prices and no bank details on purpose. Both belong in your own quote and on your own invoice, not on a public page.

A flat that is shut for most of the year is not resting. Through a Yalova winter it has no heating, no cooking, no showers and no open windows, and the coast is wet. Moisture comes in through the structure and has no way out, so it settles on the coldest surfaces: the wall behind a wardrobe pushed against an outside wall, the corner of a north facing room, the reveal around a window that was closed in September. That is where the smell of damp and the dark patches come from, and painting over them without cleaning, treating and drying the area first brings them straight back.

Outside, the south and west walls take the sun, while the walls facing the sea take the salt air and the wind driven rain. None of it is dramatic in any single year, which is why three or four seasons of it tend to be discovered all at once, in the first week of a visit.

For work on the coast, April to June and September to October are the reliable windows. Both give runs of moderate, mostly dry days: warm enough for a coating to cure properly, cool enough that it does not skin over before it has been laid off, and dry enough that an exterior wall is not rained on a few hours after it was painted. July and August are hard on a sun facing wall, and the winter months are too wet and too cold outside to be worth booking for exterior work.

So the sensible order is to work backwards from your arrival. Tell us the week you land and the interior work is planned to finish before it, with enough margin that the place has been aired and that you can raise anything you dislike in the photographs while the crew is still in the country. If you let the property to guests, the first booking becomes the deadline instead of your own arrival.

Everything that matters is written, in English or Arabic, over WhatsApp: the survey findings, the quote, the colour approvals, the key receipt, the stage reports, the invoice. Writing is not a formality here. It means neither side depends on remembering a call, and when a question comes up in the third week both of us scroll back to the same message rather than to two different memories of it.

WhatsApp rather than email because photographs are the core of this, and because it does not need both sides awake at the same hour. You read a stage report at your hour and answer at your hour.

One thing worth saying plainly: the crew on site works in Turkish. The written thread with you is in your language, and a keyholder who also speaks Turkish makes the working days smoother. It is not a requirement, and plenty of these jobs run with a keyholder who does not, but it is worth knowing before you choose who holds your key.