Composite doors in Crafthole, installed professionally.

Crafthole sits on the Rame peninsula close enough to Whitsand Bay that the weather off the sea reaches it with very little to slow it down first. There's no significant high ground between the village and the exposed south-facing coastline, which means wind that would already be strong at Looe or Downderry arrives here with more force and more salt in it. It's a small village — a single main street, a scatter of lanes, and a mix of permanent homes and holiday properties — but the exposure means every door here does harder work than an equivalent door five or ten miles inland.

We don't say that to sell an upgrade nobody needs; we say it because it changes the actual specification we recommend. A standard composite door will still outperform timber or budget uPVC out here, but Crafthole is one of the villages on our patch where we default to the enhanced coastal hardware pack — stainless fixings throughout, a reinforced hinge set, and a compression seal profile suited to driven rain — because the ordinary spec genuinely shows wear faster on this stretch of coast than it does further inland.

The specific problem with Crafthole's exposure isn't just wind speed, it's the combination of wind, salt-laden air and driven rain that hits gable-end and sea-facing properties several times a week through autumn and winter. Salt air corrodes cheap fixings and hardware faster than people expect — we've seen standard steel hinges and handles rust through in under five years on properties right on the exposed edge of the village, even when the door itself was otherwise sound.

It's also genuinely windy enough here, often enough, that a door with average sealing will let a real draught through on a rough night, not just a slight chill. Composite handles this far better than timber because the core doesn't move, but the specification of the hardware matters as much as the core material out here. A2 or 316-grade stainless fixings resist the salt corrosion that ordinary galvanised or mild steel fittings can't, and it's a detail worth insisting on if you're anywhere near the cliff edge or the bay-facing lanes rather than tucked into the more sheltered part of the village street.

A significant share of Crafthole's housing stock is holiday lets or second homes, which is typical of this stretch of the Rame peninsula given its closeness to Whitsand Bay and Portwrinkle. That changes the brief in a couple of practical ways. First, owners who aren't on site full-time want a door that genuinely doesn't need maintenance between visits — no repainting, no seasonal adjustment, nothing that degrades if the property sits empty for a fortnight in February with nobody checking on it.

Second, changeover logistics matter more here than on an owner-occupied property. We fit keyless or smart cylinders on a good number of Crafthole holiday lets specifically so owners or managing agents can issue and revoke access codes between guests without couriering keys around, which is a genuinely common request on this stretch of coast. It's a standard option on any composite door we fit, not a special order, and it tends to pay for itself quickly in reduced key-management hassle for anyone running a let remotely.

Coastal light in Crafthole is different from inland villages — brighter, with more UV exposure reflecting off the water even on overcast days — and that affects how colours read and how they age. We steer people away from very dark colours on south or west-facing doors that catch full sun for much of the day, not because the colour degrades (the Endurance palette is UV-stable and doesn't fade the way old laminate finishes did) but because dark surfaces get noticeably hot to the touch and expand slightly more through the day than lighter shades, which is worth knowing if you're choosing purely on how a colour photographs.

In practice, Anthracite Grey and Cream are the two most-fitted colours in the village — grey for a modern look on the newer builds and holiday conversions, cream for the more traditional stone and render cottages along the main street. We do also fit a good number of blues and greens on holiday properties specifically, since owners often want the door to read as coastal from the road, and those tones work well against Cornish stone and white render alike.

The lanes in and around Crafthole, and particularly the routes down toward Portwrinkle and Tregonhawke, are narrow, twisting and occasionally single-track with passing places. We plan installs here with that in mind — arriving with everything needed for the day rather than making return trips, and choosing parking that doesn't block a lane that might be the only route for a farm vehicle or a delivery van that morning.

The village street itself is more manageable, with enough width for a van to park without causing an obstruction, but even there we keep the job contained and tidy given how narrow the pavements are in places. None of this adds real time to a job, but it's worth mentioning because Crafthole is one of the villages where a first-time visit benefits from a proper look at access before the actual fitting day, which we build into the survey visit rather than leaving as a surprise.

We check the weather forecast more carefully before a Crafthole job than we would inland, simply because a genuinely wild day out on the peninsula makes an open doorway a more serious consideration than it would in a sheltered village. Given the choice, we'll schedule around a forecast of strong onshore wind rather than push through it, purely for practical reasons — packing material and dust sheets don't stay where you put them in a proper coastal gale.

Once underway, the job follows the same sequence as anywhere else: old door and frame out, opening checked and prepared, new frame templated and bedded on butyl tape and low-expansion foam, then the slab, enhanced coastal hardware and multi-point lock fitted and tested. We finish with threshold weathering suited to driven rain and a doorstep handover of the guarantee and cylinder security card, usually completing a single-door job within a day.

Crafthole doesn't have a reputation as a high-crime area, but insurers for PL11 postcodes typically still expect BS3621 or PAS24-rated locking, particularly on properties let out to holidaymakers where insurers are often stricter about security specification than they are for owner-occupied homes. Every composite door we fit carries a 3-star anti-snap cylinder as standard, which satisfies that requirement without any extra cost or a separate conversation.

For holiday let owners specifically, we'd also flag that a smart lock with an audit trail of who accessed the property and when is increasingly something insurers and letting agents look favourably on, on top of being genuinely useful for managing changeovers remotely.