Talking Property: Refurbishing an apartment for sale or rental after a long-term tenancy? Kevin O'Connor listens to an agent Who has some tips and honest advice.

No names, no pack drill. The agent and the owner were discussing how to redecorate the apartment, which had been vacated by a long-term tenant.

Given the previous occupant had spent most of her single 30s in the one-bedroom (with balcony), it's not surprising it had a homely feel to it, in spite of being ostensibly bare. As we tidied, we found postcards stuck in corners of the bathroom mirror, forgotten reminder notes on the kitchen cabinets and a discarded life behind the bed. Okay, okay - to satisfy your curiosity and my prurience, two slingback high heels of different sizes, one stocking, 100 obsolete pesetas and postcards from someone met on holiday.

So what, asked the owner, am I to do with it? First, said the agent, clean it. Get in the Molly Maids: scrub and scour, top to bottom. (I can vouch for them, having seen them re-whitening sinks with bleach and using toothbrushes in grimy corners.)

The advice was to get them in twice. Once to remove the surface grime of recent years of occupancy, then about a week later to get at the previous layer of dirt. You won't see the second layer until the first one is removed. Rest it for another week to let the smell of bleach dry out and wash all the walls down again, with sugar soap.

Then paint it, she said. Wallpaper in this climate locks in the damp, paint lets the plaster breathe. Get a colour chart and a decorator - hardware shops have all kinds of subdued emulsions these days to give a "classy" tone and usually stock the contact cards of local painters as well. Emulsion for the walls, because it can be thinned with water, when it becomes thick at the bottom of the can and you need that bit extra for a thin third coat high up by the ceiling. Oil-based or eggshell for the bathroom and kitchen, because condensation and moisture runs off the oil.

Don't forget the skirting boards, which were marked with years of scuffing from shoes and furniture. Worth a complete going over with white satinwood paint.

Mirrors, she said, reciting the old mantra about reflecting the existing space to make it look larger and provide perspective. Elaborate reproduction frames from Taiwan are a snip in most city stores.

Wooden floors instead of carpets, especially if you are renting it again - laminate is everywhere but there is a practical reason for its popularity. You clean it with a wipe, spills are easily mopped up and you won't have to "skip" it after five years of a tenant, as you would a carpet.

If you are selling, she said, it's worth spending extras on curtains, linens, cutlery and cheerful prints on the walls. You will get it back in the price.

Many apartments are sold bare, as if their owners resented the new purchaser, who in turn thinks the seller is mean and as a punishment may haggle over €1,000 in the price. All in the unconscious, said the agent, but that's how people are.

Spend a few hundred on the trimmings to make the place look like someone could comfortably move in, tomorrow. Stock up with towels, bedlinen - give them as a gift to the new owner, she said, adding that Dunne's have a terrific range of apartment artifacts, reasonably priced. And so on, down to new bathroom fittings (chrome) and flowers in the livingroom.

Flowers? I asked. Isn't that a bit obvious, like the coffee bubbling (think of all the owners who bought percolators over the years, never having used them at home, and burned themselves).

No, said the agent, coffee is naff, too many property journalists wrote about it. Now it makes buyers suspicious. Flowers, she said, flowers soften the heart.

It was, I thought, a lovely phrase and who could argue with that . . . or the agent's experience.