Ladywell shares our postcode and looks nothing like the rest of it. SE13 in the town centre is towers and 1960s blocks; ten minutes south it is quiet terraced streets with Ladywell Fields and the Ravensbourne along the eastern edge and a station on the line into town. The price list is identical, which is the point of a price list. A two bedroom move-out is £243 and a bedroom carpet £36.
Being ten minutes out buys you the best slots
Ladywell is where the vans start and finish, so this is the part of the round that gets the 8am appointments and the ones that run late into the evening, both at the ordinary rate. If you want a cleaner in before work or a check-out clean finished after an agent has locked up for the day, ask for Ladywell hours and you will usually get them. Outside the September rush it is often same day or next day here. Parking is the one thing to check rather than assume: B1 and B2, the zones with the long hours and the Sunday morning control, are the town centre ones, so on a Ladywell street we read the plate on your road instead of guessing from the postcode.
The bay window is where the dust actually lives
Most of Ladywell is two and three bedroom terraces or the flats made out of them, and nearly all of them have a bay at the front with a radiator under the window. The sill behind that radiator is the piece nobody reaches and the piece a clerk with a torch finds first. It goes on the list as a matter of course rather than waiting for the week somebody notices it. The older houses often have the front and back reception opened into one, which is a through lounge at £61 rather than two rooms priced apart, and the rest of the floor prices run £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room and £41 a flight.
Ground floors on the low streets
Roads lying low beside the Ravensbourne and the Fields stay damp from October onwards. The evidence turns up as black mould in a bedroom corner, or on the patch of outside wall a wardrobe has been shoved flat against. We get called out for it a few times a month through the colder half of the year, and the position on it is short enough to state in full. Washing the surface growth off works, and it is part of a deep clean rather than an extra. Keeping it off is not a cleaning job at all. Where the cause is a cold wall with no airflow behind the furniture, or moisture coming into the building, it grows back on the same wall, and the trades for that are builders, damp specialists and flooring fitters. We do not damp proof, dry anything out, survey anything or guarantee that it stays away. What you get instead is the honest position on the day, plus the name of the trade to call. Nobody enjoys hearing it with the heating already on.
The water is the same as the town centre
The Thames Water supply down here is as hard as it is anywhere else in SE13, and every bathroom shows it: cloudy shower glass, taps that fur within weeks of being polished, a kettle that scales inside a fortnight. On a check-out inventory that is what gets photographed, so a good share of any move-out clean in these streets goes on descaling rather than on anything more interesting. Glass scaled for years is often etched underneath and no chemical brings that back. We say so on the day rather than afterwards.
Weekly work near the station
More of our SE13 regulars are down here than up in the town centre blocks, and they tend to be people who leave from Ladywell station early and want the house done while it is empty. Weekly is £22 per cleaner per hour and fortnightly £24, with ironing drawn from the same hours at £12 and the same cleaner kept on the house wherever the rota allows. A key held here or a safe screwed beside the door covers most of them. The regular service page explains how keys and holiday cover work.
Brockley is up the hill west of here and Blackheath sits east across the town centre, all worked at one set of prices with nothing added for the miles. The prices page has every line of it, and 020 8077 4931 reaches somebody between 8am and 8pm on any day.
Questions we get asked
Is Ladywell inside your main area?
Yes. It is SE13, the same postcode as the town centre, so there is no travel charge. It is also where the vans start and finish, which is why the earliest and latest slots of the day tend to go here.
Can you remove black mould from a bedroom wall?
The surface growth and most of the staining, yes, as part of a deep clean. The cause is usually a cold wall with furniture pressed against it or moisture in the building, and that needs a builder or a damp specialist. It grows back until that is dealt with.
Do you damp proof or dry out a floor?
No. We clean surfaces, so damp proofing, tanking, ventilation work, drying out and lifting soaked underlay all belong to other trades. We will tell you which one to ring rather than sell you a clean that cannot help.
Why does the bathroom take so long here?
Hard water. SE13 is on a hard Thames Water supply, so scale on the screen, the taps and the grout is the slowest part of most bathrooms, and it wants an acid descaler and dwell time rather than effort.
How much is a two bed move-out clean in Ladywell?
£243, fixed, with the single oven included. Carpets are counted on top at £36 a bedroom, £43 a living room and £61 for a through lounge where the two receptions have been opened into one.
Rather talk? Ring 020 8077 4931, seven days.