Composite doors in Mevagissey, installed professionally.

Mevagissey wasn't planned, it grew, and that shows the moment we turn up with a tape measure. The fishermen's cottages stacked up Polkirt Hill and around Church Street were built door-first for narrow lanes, not for a modern van to reverse up to, and the apertures on those old granite-and-cob frontages are rarely square or even a standard width. We template every job here rather than working off a brochure size, because a 3mm error on a cottage door that's already lost a bit of shape over 150 years is the difference between a door that closes sweetly and one that needs planing every winter.

Higher up toward Trewollock and the newer infill off Tregoney Hill, the housing is more conventional 1970s-onward stock with standard door widths, and those jobs are quicker and cheaper to spec because there's no historic reveal to work around.

Portmellon, just round the headland, throws in a third variable: several properties there sit close enough to the shoreline that the front door effectively doubles as a flood-and-spray barrier in a big south-easterly. We treat those apertures the same way we'd treat a working harbourside unit — raised cill detail where the property allows it, and a serious weather seal as standard rather than an extra.

Mevagissey harbour faces almost due south-east, which means it catches weather that Fowey and Charlestown, tucked into their own valleys, are largely spared. Salt spray off a big swell reaches well up Fore Street and Cliff Street, and we've replaced enough softwood doors in this village to know the failure pattern by heart: swollen bottom rail first, then a lock keep that seizes with corrosion, then the paint blistering on the seaward face while the sheltered side still looks fine.

Every door we fit in PL26 postcodes right down by the harbour gets A4 stainless fixings and hinges as standard, not as an upsell — ordinary zinc-plated screws pit visibly within two winters this close to the water. The threshold is a drainable stainless-clad cill so spray that does reach the doorstep drains straight back out rather than sitting against the frame joint.

Further up the hill toward Higher Town the exposure eases off noticeably, and we'll happily spec a lighter-duty finish there if a customer wants to save a little on the ironmongery upgrade — there's no point selling marine-grade fixings to a house that's sheltered by three streets of granite.

Mevagissey's conservation character means loud colours tend to look wrong even where planning doesn't technically restrict them. Chartwell Green and a soft Cream are the two we fit most often on the harbourside cottages — both read correctly against granite and limewashed render and match the tone of the working boats rather than clashing with them. Duck Egg Blue turns up occasionally on the fishermen's cottages near the inner harbour, echoing the old boat-paint colours without looking like a pastiche.

The newer housing off Tregoney Hill and toward Trewollock takes Anthracite Grey comfortably, since those properties have plainer rendered or brick frontages without the same conservation sensitivity.

We bring a full 20-colour Endurance swatch book to every survey rather than asking anyone to choose off a screen — colour reads very differently in Cornish coastal light than it does on a monitor, and a shade that looks right in a photograph can look chalky or too dark against actual granite.

Access is the honest challenge in Mevagissey, more than the door spec itself. Several of the lanes off Fore Street and Church Street are single-track with no realistic van parking directly outside, so we plan the carry distance at survey stage — sometimes the materials go in by hand trolley from a loading point fifty or sixty yards away, which we build into the day's schedule rather than discovering on the morning.

Portmellon and the properties along the coast road have easier direct access for most of the year, though we avoid scheduling harbourside jobs on the busiest summer weekends when the village fills with visitors and parking disappears entirely.

Removal, template, frame and slab still complete in a single day on nearly every Mevagissey job — it just occasionally starts earlier to allow for the walk up the hill with materials.

Every composite door we fit carries a 10-year guarantee covering the slab, the frame and the multi-point locking mechanism, which matters more here than in a sheltered inland village because Mevagissey's lower streets do occasionally see surface flooding after heavy rain combined with a high tide. A composite door doesn't swell or delaminate the way a timber door would if water sits against the bottom rail for a few hours, which has genuinely saved a couple of our customers a repair bill after a bad spring tide.

We register the guarantee at handover and leave a laminated spec card with the cylinder security code, so if a lock ever needs a replacement key cut in a hurry — not unheard of with holiday letting turnover — there's no guesswork for whoever picks up the job.

A large share of the harbourside cottages in Mevagissey are holiday lets or second homes, and the brief from owners is nearly always the same: something that survives the salt air with minimal upkeep, and ideally a keyless or keypad cylinder so changeover doesn't depend on posting keys or meeting cleaners in person.

We fit a good number of 3-star anti-snap cylinders with keypad overrides on these properties, which also satisfies most holiday-let insurance conditions without needing a separate five-lever mortice lock bolted on as an afterthought.

For owners who let commercially, a fresh composite door in the right heritage colour also does a quiet job on the listing photos — Mevagissey attracts a market that's booking the postcard, and a tired grey uPVC door in the hero shot undersells the cottage.

A meaningful number of Mevagissey's harbourside properties stand empty for long stretches outside the summer season, and that changes the security conversation compared with a permanently occupied family home. Insurers assessing an empty or lightly-occupied coastal cottage often ask specifically about door security standard, and a PAS24-tested composite doorset with a 3-star anti-snap cylinder is usually enough to satisfy that without further conditions attached to the policy.

We've fitted enough doors on empty-for-winter cottages around Cliff Street and Jetty Street to know the second failure mode isn't a break-in attempt, it's condensation and damp building up behind a badly sealed old door while nobody's checking the property. A composite door's sealed core doesn't give damp anywhere to take hold the way a hollow or poorly maintained timber door can, which is one more reason owners managing a cottage remotely tend to specify composite without needing much persuading.