Edgbaston Home Cleaning, from Calthorpe Houses to Converted Flats
Domestic work in Edgbaston looks more like housekeeping than like a fortnightly tidy, because the buildings are the size they are. A house on or near the Calthorpe Estate may run to three or four floors with a lower ground kitchen, a principal floor that is actually used and entertained in, and bedrooms above it that are barely disturbed from one month to the next. Spreading the same hours evenly across all of that makes no sense, so we agree where the time goes before we start.
The other kind of home here is a flat inside a house that was converted decades ago. Tall rooms with a cornice that a stud wall now cuts through, a kitchen fitted into a former bedroom, a shower room squeezed into a rear return. Those are perfectly good homes and they clean well, but they are not standard rooms and a standard room list does not fit them.
This page is about the inside of your own front door. The shared hall, stair and entrance glass of a converted block are a scheduled arrangement made with the freeholder or managing agent, quoted per building and invoiced separately from your flat. The boundary matters from the start, because they are two different agreements.
- Service
- Domestic Cleaning
- Area covered
- Edgbaston, B15 and B16
- 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 10 minutes
- Price
- Quoted per property before we start (what the quote covers)
- Booking
- Call or WhatsApp 07788 574283
Height, deep sash reveals and gates with alarm panels
Two features of these buildings create work that a modern house does not. The first is height. Cornices, picture rails, tall door heads and the tops of window frames sit well above the reach of any household duster, so dust accumulates there quietly for years until somebody finally looks up. The second is the windows themselves. A tall sash sits in a deep reveal, often with shutters folded back into it, and that reveal collects the fine traffic dust drawn in off the Hagley Road and the Bristol Road all day. Wiping the sill without dealing with the reveal and the shutter faces leaves the visible half of the job undone. On top of that, access here is usually a gate, a fob and an alarm panel instead of a front path, so it pays to arrange it once, properly. And there is a lot of mature planting across the estate, which means pollen and fine debris through the open windows all summer.
- Houses over three or four floors with a lower ground kitchen, where an evenly spread visit leaves the rooms in daily use under-cleaned
- Deep sash reveals and folding shutters, which hold traffic dust drawn in off the Hagley Road and the Bristol Road
- Cornices, picture rails and tall door heads that no household duster reaches
- Flats inside converted villas, with tall rooms, a kitchen in a former bedroom and a shower room in the return
- Gated drives, fobs and alarm panels, set up once so they never need negotiating on the day
- Mature estate planting sending pollen and fine debris through open windows across the summer
Scoped floor by floor, with upper rooms on rotation
We agree the scope floor by floor, not room by room, because that is how these houses are used. The principal floor, the kitchen and the bathrooms are every visit; upper bedrooms and box rooms go on rotation unless you want otherwise. High work is done with extendable tools from the floor, and anything that would need a tower is not regular visit work, which we flag at the first visit. Original tile inside a flat or a hall gets a neutral product and controlled water, not a strong detergent, because the damage from repeated alkaline washing builds slowly enough that nobody notices until it is done. If you give us a fob, gate code or key, you need not be in to let us in.
- A scope agreed floor by floor, with the principal floor and bathrooms every visit and upper rooms on rotation
- Cornices, picture rails and door heads reached with extendable tools from the floor, never a ladder against a plaster run
- Sash reveals, shutter faces and window boards wiped every visit, since that is where the road dust settles
- Neutral chemistry and controlled water on original tile, never a detergent that greys it over a year
- Access arranged once: if you give us a fob, code or key, you need not be in on the day
More detail on the equipment and the order of work: the full domestic cleaning process.
Houses and flats across B15 and B16
The house work concentrates on the estate roads off Westbourne Road, Church Road and Carpenter Road, where properties are large and stable. The flats are closer in, around Five Ways, Islington Row and the Hagley Road frontage, where most of the big houses were divided. Parking is usually inside a gate at the houses and a permit or a bay at the flats, so the fob matters more than the space. In match and event weeks at Edgbaston Cricket Ground we move a slot or two to avoid the traffic, and we tell you in advance. The Hagley Road itself is at a standstill before nine, which is why slots on that side of the area start once the morning rush has cleared.
Floors, bathrooms and the lower ground kitchen in a B15 quote
Visits are priced on the real length of the job and then held, so the figure is the same each time. Floors are the biggest lever here: a four storey house with two flights and two half landings is a different proposition from a wide house on two floors with the same number of rooms. After that it is bathrooms, since each one takes much the same time whatever its size, and whether the lower ground kitchen and utility are in scope. Laundry, ironing and bed changes are quoted as time and never absorbed. An extra visit before or after entertaining is priced as its own visit, not squeezed into the regular one. If you also want the communal parts of a converted building covered, that is quoted per building and per visit, and the two never appear on the same invoice.
Weekly or twice weekly for large houses, fortnightly for flats
Weekly is the usual arrangement in the larger houses, and the biggest of them work better on two visits a week, one weighted to the principal floor and one to everything else. A flat in a converted villa is generally comfortable on fortnightly, and monthly is enough for a small one lived in by somebody who is rarely home. Monthly in a four storey house is not really a maintenance interval, and we would rather explain that than take the booking and disappoint you. Sash reveals and window boards are the exception to all of it, since they want doing every visit whatever the interval.
First time customer. Excellent service and great job. Will definitely be using them again in the future.
Absolutely brilliant service. Adefem was professional, job well done. Everything was left beautifully clean, and I was genuinely impressed.
Nice man great at what he does
Edgbaston · Domestic Cleaning
Frequently asked questions
Yes, and that is a straightforward booking. Your flat is yours to arrange. The shared hall, stair, entrance glass and bin store belong to the building rather than to you, so cleaning those is a separate scheduled arrangement made with the freeholder, the managing agent or the leaseholders between them. We can quote both, but they are two different agreements and two different invoices, and keeping them apart is what stops an argument about what your money covered.
Yes, with extendable tools from the floor, and that is worth writing into the scope. What we will not do is put a ladder against a plaster run or a shutter. If a room has a stairwell void or a ceiling height that needs a tower, that is access equipment work, not something to attempt on a weekly visit, and we will tell you before starting, not do the reachable half and leave the rest.
Because of the road rather than the cleaning. Traffic film off the Hagley Road and the Bristol Road drifts in through sash gaps and open windows, and it settles on horizontal surfaces first, which means sills, window boards and shutter tops. Wiping them is part of every visit here. It is not a sign that the last clean failed, and no product stops it returning. A damp cloth does more than a polish, which tends to hold the next layer of dust, not repel it.
Yes, and it is the usual set up in B15. If you give us the gate fob or code and the alarm code, you need not be in, and the codes are noted in the scope and never written on keys or tags. If a visit ever has to move, we tell you before the day. Where a house has a separate service entrance or a lower ground door, we will use whichever you prefer.
Yes, and it is better booked as its own visit than tacked onto a regular one. A pre event clean is weighted to the principal floor, the cloakroom and the glass, and the visit afterwards is weighted to the kitchen and the floors. Both run within our hours, weekdays 8am to 6pm and Saturdays 9am to 6pm, so for a party the clean is on the day itself and the tidy up is the next working day. Give us as much notice as you can, and more in December.
Yes, on request, and in a house of this size they are quoted as time on top of the visit. Stripping and remaking three or four beds properly is a real piece of work, and a basket of ironing is easily half an hour. If we folded either into the same hours it would come out of the bathrooms or the kitchen, which is not a trade anybody would choose if they were asked. So we ask.
Other cleaning we do in Edgbaston
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