LAST week, Jane Keisner was up a ladder on a building site wearing a mink coat, hard hat and wellies. She and her business partner, Joanna Lindsay, are known to their clients as the Trinny and Susannah of the decorating world: bossy, vibrant, formidably energetic, fixers of all things domestic and blessed with a strong sense of style.

The duo can unpack a kitchen, find, mend, build or unbuild, design, project manage, make a bed or scrub a floor – they can even hire you a good nanny.

They are also peacemakers, often being called in by desperate clients on the point of murdering a builder or demanding a divorce over disputed curtain swatches. The pair bring harmony, but not by imposing their own sense of style: they work with a client’s own taste, whether that is for the chintzy or the minimal.

And they claim to save their clients money. Managing a project yourself can prove costly when you don’t know where to go for bargains and have to buy everything retail. The two Js, perhaps uniquely, pass on their trade discounts to their clients.

I called them in myself recently when my home makeover was about 85 per cent finished.

I had spent hours fondling Valli & Valli door furniture and marrying Majestic shower doors with Bette baths, and so many days deciding with whom I should sleep (Bart Halpern bedroom fabrics won me over) that I was in danger of paying council tax at the fabric store.

But I was also overloaded (is life really meaningless without a Gaggenau steam oven?), and could no longer see the designer wood for the (maple, oak or walnut?) trees. I lacked the confidence to finish the project myself and longed for help. The two Js came to my rescue.

The two women arrived at my north London home, Jane, 42, decorated expensively in Prada and Gucci, Joanna, 36, more high-street in Warehouse and Zara: two different approaches, both yielding terrific results.

They started working together in 1998. Before that, Jane was a currency dealer turned door-todoor speciality bread seller; Joanna cut her teeth building a gift business.

The two of them charge though my house passing sentence on each room: that desk would have to be moved; a plain blind would make this room look bigger; Andrew Martin’s mushroom fabric would look divine here; change that armchair; put battery-controlled Velux blinds in that room and a touch of taupe in the other. How about a Saniflo lavatory in this cupboard? Jane downed coffee on the move, Joanna scribbled notes.

And then they turn their attention to me. They had picked up on my taste the moment they walked through the door and were so spot on. I had already on order many of the items they suggested that I buy (except it took me months to track them down).

The pair also had suggestions to achieve the results I wanted in a more economical fashion.

Joanna takes out her phone and it looks as though they might be phoning each other, but Joanna is getting an estimate from the joiner.

Their enthusiasm for my home comes thick and fast. “Oooh, what beautiful carpets, lavender-tinged Wilton,” murmurs Jane, stroking my mousecoloured carpet appreciatively.

“Gorgeous,” concurs Joanna. “And those stunning recessed downlighters must be by Candela.”

Their own style is low-key and neutral, one of understated elegance. But they are adaptable. “We draw the line at cut-off curtains, or orange walls with purple spots,” says Jane, entering my daughter’s bedroom and encountering its blue-and-white spotted Cath Kidston carpet, raspberry walls and azure floral blinds.

Joanna and Jane both attend the initial client meeting. For the first consultation and ensuing estimates they charge £500. Thereafter, they charge a flat fee, calculated on their instinct for the job’s length and “Ikea has a table that would look fantastic in this kitchen,” says Joanna. “Otherwise our joiner could make you one with a walnut top and steel base. Or have you seen … ?” She makes a mobile call. cost. That usually works out at about 10 to 15 per cent of the project. Recently they charged £30,000 for changes to a suspended gym over an indoor pool in Belgravia, but just before that they were able to manage the complete makeover of a Muswell Hill flat for just £2,500.

“We hate to spend people’s money unnecessarily,” says Jane. “If we can find a fabric for £40 that looks the same as one for £150, we’ll always go for the cheaper option.”

For one job they were given carte blanche at a St John’s Wood Victorian villa – even down to commissioning fine art from Cork Street with individual pictures costing up to £50,000. Then there was the Leicester Square flat where they worked at 4.30am because delivery lorries were not allowed into the area after 5am.

The two sometimes have a less happy relationship with builders. One got so exasperated with them he walked off the site and went home, complaining that his wife nagged him less than Joanna did. “But I called him up and nagged him some more and he came back and finished the job,” she giggles.

As the pair leave my home, their promises to send me catalogues, swatches and people are soon being delivered – even before they get to the end of my road, their suppliers and contacts begin calling me to make appointments for quotes.