Cleaners in Brockley

Brockley is SE4, immediately west of us, and it is largely Victorian villas. The conservation area along Brockley Road and Wickham Road is the middle of it: wide streets of tall semi-detached houses built for one family each, most of them now holding two, three or four flats apiece. A one bedroom flat here is £207 for a move-out clean, the same as a one bedroom in a new block, and it takes noticeably longer.

The villas are the job

A converted villa flat is a particular sort of clean. High ceilings, which puts cornice and picture rails out of reach of a normal weekly visit. Original boards in the hall, usually under a rug. Deep sash sills that collect everything, and a check-out clerk with a torch finds the runners inside a minute, so we carry a step ladder as standard on this side of the borough. The rooms are simply larger than a modern flat’s. Handsome, and slow. None of that changes the band, which follows the bedrooms on your agreement: £243 at two bedrooms and £339 at three.

Which front door you have decides the morning

Ask us anything else and we will still ask you this one. In the villas it is usually one shared front door with an internal stair and a hall that belongs to the freeholder rather than to any tenancy, so the communal flight stays off your bill unless the managing agent has booked it. In the smaller terraces towards the bottom of the hill the pattern flips: two separate front doors, no shared hallway at all, and the upstairs flat with no route through to the garden or the outside tap. Which one you have decides where a hose runs and where a bucket gets filled. Flat numbering in these conversions is a law unto itself as well, so give us the floor and the letter rather than a bare number.

Bare boards, loose rugs and how that prices

A lot of these villas had the fitted carpet up years ago, which changes what gets booked. Room by room work here tends to be one flight at £41 plus a bedroom or two at £36 rather than an entire ground floor. Rugs carry most of the effort. Every one comes up and is billed separately, £35 up to 2m² and £51 above, since a rug and a fitted carpet call for different tools and folding one into a room rate would be nonsense. Timber stays dry. The gaps between boards hold dust and give it back the following day, so day two never quite matches day one. That is boards behaving normally rather than anybody making a mistake.

Sashes, and where the front garden puts the van

Most of these houses still have their original sashes. We clean the inside of the glass and the sills and leave the cords, the beading and the paintwork alone, and a sash painted shut stays shut. Outside glass above the ground floor needs somebody with a ladder and the right insurance, which is not us. The villas are also set back behind front gardens, so the hose run from the van to your front door is longer here than in a terrace, and we need to be within about twenty five metres. Parking is generally easier than it is up on the high street, where the market and the bus routes rule out stopping anywhere useful for most of the day.

What SE4 books

Floors and move-outs, roughly evenly split, with a decent run of fortnightly housework at £24 per cleaner per hour in the houses that never got converted. Brockley turns over more slowly than New Cross but the flats are bigger, so the bands sit higher. Landlords resetting a whole flat between tenants tend to want the team deep clean from £186 rather than an hourly visit. New Cross is north of here and Ladywell south east, and all three are close enough to be booked together. Rates do not move between them, and the whole list is on the prices page.

Questions we get asked

Why does a Brockley flat take longer than a new build?

Ceiling height and room size, mostly, plus sash runners and picture rails a modern flat does not have. The fixed end of tenancy price is the same either way, £207 for a one bedroom, and the extra hour is ours to absorb.

Is a knocked-through reception charged as one room or two?

One. A through lounge is £61, which comes in under a living room at £43 and a bedroom at £36 charged separately.

How are rugs priced on a bare floor?

Every rug bills on its own, £35 up to 2m² and £51 above, with the floor beneath handled apart from it. Timber stays dry throughout, so the rug is ours and the boards belong to a joiner.

Who pays for the communal stairs in a converted villa?

The freeholder or the managing agent, since the shared hall sits outside any single tenancy. It stays off your bill unless they book it. A flight inside your own flat is £41, landing counted in.

Do you cover the conservation area streets?

Brockley Road, Wickham Road and the roads running off them, yes. SE4 is on the same round as SE13 with no travel charge, and the same price list applies.