After the Monsoon

Everyone wants the same thing at the same time. Guesthouses are preparing for season, families are refreshing for Diwali, and villa owners are returning to find work needed. Workshop capacity across the state is at its tightest.

If your requirement is time-sensitive — rooms that must be lettable by November, a house that must be ready for a family visit — the order needs to be placed in August or early September, during the rains, when the workshop is quiet.

For anything not time-sensitive, October and November are perfectly reasonable, but expect longer lead times than at any other point in the year and plan accordingly.

The monsoon does not stop on 30 September, whatever the calendar in people's heads says. The India Meteorological Department revised its normal withdrawal date for the state capital to 14 October, and October still brings a meaningful amount of rain in an ordinary year, often as heavy afternoon storms. Heavy downpours in the first half of the month are normal rather than unusual.

Humidity falls more slowly than the rain does. Morning relative humidity in the state capital in October averages 86 per cent, against 91 in September, and it is not until December that afternoons become properly dry. The first fortnight of October is therefore a drying-out period rather than a working one.

In practice that means opening the house and airing it in early October, but holding off on washing large curtains until the weather has settled into a run of clear days. Fabric washed during a wet spell in the first week of October can take as long to dry as it would in August.

When curtains come down after the rains, look at the wall before looking at the fabric. A patch of dark staining or grey bloom on the plaster directly behind a curtain means moisture sat there for weeks, and rehanging a clean curtain against it simply restarts the problem. The wall has to be dealt with first, or the new season starts with the old problem still in place.

Older houses built in laterite with lime plaster hold moisture long after the rain stops, and they need to breathe it out. Painting over a damp patch with a sealing emulsion traps the water and pushes it sideways. The better approach is to let the wall dry fully, clean off surface growth, and repair with a compatible breathable finish.

Check the fixings at the same time. A plug set into damp laterite or crumbling plaster may have loosened over the season even if the bracket looks straight. Give each bracket a firm pull before the curtain goes back up, and reset any that move into sound material. It takes a few minutes per window and saves a fallen curtain in December.

Once everything is aired and washed, most curtains fall into one of three groups. Some are simply fine. Some have a sound face fabric and a failed lining, which is common because the lining faces the wall and takes the damp first. And some have lost structural strength and will not see another season.

Relining is worth considering when the face fabric is good and the curtain was well made. It keeps the heading, the pleats and the fabric you chose, and it is an opportunity to switch to a polyester lining that will cope better next year. The trade-off is that a relined curtain is only as good as its oldest part.

Replacement is the honest answer when the fabric feels papery, tears when stressed at the hem, or carries staining that has set into a natural fibre. Spending on repairs to a curtain in that condition usually means paying twice, because it will fail again at the next monsoon and the repair goes with it.

Coastal houses carry an additional layer of damage that inland ones do not. Salt settles on every surface near the sea, and through the monsoon it absorbs moisture from the air and stays wet. On fabric it leaves a faint stiffness and a tendency to reabsorb damp; on metal it is the main driver of corrosion.

Hardware near the sea should be wiped with fresh water, dried and then cycled. Aluminium track may show a white powdery deposit, which usually cleans off; steel will show rust, which does not. Motor housings and chains deserve particular attention, because salt that gets inside a mechanism shortens its life considerably.

Washing curtains after the monsoon removes the salt as well as the dust, which is a large part of why it is worth doing even when fabric looks clean. A curtain rehung with a season of salt still in it will feel damp to the touch on every humid evening of the dry season.

For a property with bookings starting in November, the order of work matters. Air the building first, then clean, then assess, then decide what must be replaced. Ordering replacements before the assessment is finished tends to mean ordering the wrong things, or ordering too much. A clear sequence also stops the same room being cleaned twice.

Anything that affects a guest's night — light control in bedrooms, blinds that work, fixings that hold — takes priority over anything decorative. A faded cushion can wait until December; a blackout blind that will not come down cannot. The pre-season rental page on this site covers that inspection in more detail.

Photographs for listings should be taken after the work is done rather than before, and in the clear light of late October or November. A room photographed in the grey of early October, with curtains still drying on a line, does the property no favours for the rest of the season.