Bournville Home Cleaning Inside Arts and Crafts Village Houses
Owners and Bournville Village Trust tenants book regular cleaning here on exactly the same terms, and the arrangement is between you and us. A cleaner coming into your kitchen every fortnight is a private matter for the household.
What a village house actually needs is shaped by how it was built. Arts and Crafts layouts run to a lot of small rooms rather than a few large ones, a return stair, deep window seats used as shelves, quarry tile or original boards on the ground floor, and painted joinery on almost every surface at hand height. Out towards Mary Vale Road and the Stirchley end of B30 the stock changes to interwar semis with a conventional layout, and those visits are quicker for the same floor area.
We are eight minutes from our Selly Oak base, so a regular day in the village is easy to hold, and a short visit suits a village of modestly sized houses.
- Service
- Domestic Cleaning
- Area covered
- Bournville, B30
- Local authority
- Birmingham
- How we do it
- The same day each visit, working to a list agreed room by room
- From our Selly Oak base
- About 8 minutes
- Price
- Quoted per property before we start (common questions)
- Booking
- Call or WhatsApp 07788 574283
Small rooms, painted joinery and window seats used as shelves
The village houses are best planned as a route, not a room list, because there are so many small spaces linked by a stair that doubles back. Two jobs inside them get skipped more than any others. The first is painted joinery: doors, frames, architraves and window seats in a house this age carry hand marks that a surface wipe never reaches, and pale paint shows every one of them. The second is the window seats and deep casement sills themselves, which are used as shelves, so cleaning them properly means lifting things and putting them back instead of wiping around a row of plants. Add the Village Green, the school run and a lot of mature planting at the front door, and there is a steady supply of grit and leaf litter arriving at the threshold as well.
- Village layouts with many small rooms and a return stair, which work better as a planned route than as a room list
- Painted joinery on doors, frames and window seats, which shows hand marks and is the thing most often skipped
- Quarry tiled and original board floors that want a barely damp mop and a neutral product, never a soaking
- Deep casement sills and window seats used as shelves, which have to be cleared and replaced each time
- Built in cupboards, pantries and understairs stores, which are easy to leave out of a scope and slow to do properly
- Interwar semis towards Mary Vale Road and Griffins Brook Lane, where the layout is conventional and the visit runs faster
Quarry tile, boards and deep sills handled to one written plan
The scope is written down before the first visit and names the surfaces to leave alone as carefully as the ones to clean: which floors stay dry, which timber takes a neutral product only, and which sills we clear and reset. Internal glass and sills are included; the pane by pane clean of a small paned casement belongs to an exterior window clean, where the time and the pure water pole are available. Where a tenancy sets a standard for the condition of the property, we work to that wording rather than to a generic list.
- A written scope that names what we leave alone, not only what we clean
- A neutral product and a barely damp mop on quarry tile and original boards, agreed once and held
- Window seats and deep sills cleared and reset, with everything standing on them put back in place
- Nothing external touched on a regular visit, so no covenant question arises from it
- A tenancy condition standard used as the scope where one applies
More detail on the equipment and the order of work: our domestic cleaning method.
Two kinds of Bournville household
The village has two kinds of household, and they want slightly different things. In the village core, around the Village Green, Linden Road, Sycamore Road and Woodbrooke Road, it is households in houses they intend to stay in, where fortnightly visits suit and the fabric matters most. Out towards Mary Vale Road, Griffins Brook Lane and the Stirchley end, it is families in interwar semis, where weekly visits and laundry make more sense. Parking is on street across the village and rarely difficult away from school drop off and pick up, which is one reason regular visits keep the same hour as well as the same weekday. At about eight minutes from Selly Oak, a first visit here can usually go in within the week.
Room count over floor area in an Arts and Crafts house
Visits are priced on the real length of the job and then held so you can budget for them. The Bournville surprise is that room count matters far more than floor area: a village house with six small rooms, a return stair and a tiled hall takes longer than an open plan property of the same size. Painted joinery adds time as well, because doing it properly is a wiping job across a lot of linear metres, never a quick pass. Whether the window seats, built in cupboards and pantry are in scope is worth deciding at the start, since that decision moves the length of the visit more than most. Laundry and ironing are quoted as time, on top of the visit.
Fortnightly in the village core, weekly in the family semis
Fortnightly is the common choice across the village and suits a house that is kept in order day to day. Weekly is more usual in the family semis towards Stirchley and Cotteridge, particularly with children or a dog. Monthly works if you handle the surfaces yourself and want the kitchen, bathroom and stairs done properly by somebody else. A full spring reset, cupboards emptied and paintwork washed down throughout, is a deep clean booked on its own, not a long regular visit, and it pairs sensibly with having the exterior work done in the same season.
Excellent job, highly recommended.
Nice man great at what he does
Bournville · Domestic Cleaning
Frequently asked questions
As a route, not a room list. The visit follows the same path every time, top floor down, and the painted joinery and deep casement sills are done on the way, lifting what sits on them and putting it back, so nothing gets missed because it sits between two rooms.
Yes, on the same terms. If your tenancy sets out a standard for the condition of the property, tell us and we will work to that wording. It is a useful thing to have written into the scope, because it means the visit is aimed at the standard you are held to, not at a general idea of tidy.
A neutral product and a barely damp mop, with nothing acidic near unsealed tile and nothing soaking on old boards. Water sitting in the joints of a quarry tiled kitchen floor is what lifts them eventually, so the technique matters more than the product. If a floor has been sealed or oiled at some point, tell us what with and we will work to it, because stripping a seal unevenly is visible for years afterwards.
The internal glass and the sills, yes. A pane by pane clean of an Arts and Crafts casement, glazing bars, timber frame and all, is exterior window work with a pure water pole, and it takes far longer than a modern unit. Trying to squeeze it into a fortnightly visit would mean shortening the kitchen or the bathroom to pay for it, which is not a trade worth making.
Yes, on street, and it is rarely an issue outside school drop off and pick up. That is exactly why a regular booking keeps the same hour on the same weekday, so on the roads where the school run bites we are simply not there at the wrong moment. If your road is particularly tight, tell us when you book and we will place you accordingly.
Only if we put them in the scope, and they are worth a conversation at the start. The fronts and handles are quick and belong in every visit, since painted cupboard doors at hand height are where marks show first. The insides are a different job: emptying a pantry, wiping the shelves and putting everything back is deep clean work, and it is better booked once or twice a year than attempted in the last ten minutes of a fortnightly visit.
Other cleaning we do in Bournville
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