Deep Cleaning in Erdington

Where long occupancy and poor ventilation leave their film

What builds up in an Erdington property comes from long occupancy and poor ventilation, not neglect. A family that has cooked in the same rear-extension kitchen since the children were small has a film on the wall unit tops, on the ceiling above the hob and inside the hood that no weekly clean has ever gone near. In the flats the problem is air: a recirculating cooker hood puts grease straight back into a small room, and an internal bathroom relies on one fan wired to the light, so the grout stays damp for hours and mould takes root in the sealant. Birmingham runs on soft Elan Valley water, so none of this is scale. It is grease, body oils and mould.

• Interwar semi kitchens where the same household has cooked for fifteen or twenty years and nothing above the wall units has been touched
• Windowless bathrooms in B23 flats with a fan on the light switch, so the grout never fully dries out
• Cooker hood filters hidden behind a cupboard door, which is why they often come out for the first time on a deep clean
• Soap scum and body oil on shower screens, with no scale to speak of, because Elan Valley water is soft
• Cafes and takeaways around the High Street wanting a full kitchen degrease, booked for an 8am start before they open

Cornice in a villa flat, coving in a 1930s semi: top down either way

Dry work comes first and from the top, and in Erdington that means two different ceilings. A converted villa flat still has its original cornice and picture rail carrying decades of dust. A 1930s semi has coving, a loft hatch surround and the tops of internal doors. Then the kitchen is taken apart: filter out and into a soak, the outside of the hood wiped down, oven interior and door glass, hob, cupboard fronts and the gap the cooker slides into. Bathrooms are worked back to the grout line with dwell time on the sealant. Where a flat is only reachable through a shared stairwell, we sheet the landing on the way in.

• Metal filter lifted out and left soaking while the rest of the kitchen is stripped, never just wiped in place
• Sealant and grout given time to work, since on soft water the mould is the real problem and one scrub and a rinse will not move it
• The communal landing and stair sheeted where a flat can only be reached through a shared entrance
• One booked day per property, so the whole house is finished in a single visit

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: the full deep cleaning process.

Deep cleans in a B23 semi and a converted flat

The house work sits out on the semis spreading towards Pype Hayes and Brookvale, and it clusters in two seasons: spring, and the fortnight before Christmas when family are coming. The flat work is scattered across the blocks and conversions between the town centre and Gravelly Hill, and it lands whenever somebody buys, sells or inherits one. There is a third slice on the High Street, where a cafe kitchen needs stripping; visits run within our hours, and an 8am start usually has the kitchen clear before trading. Parking is straightforward on the residential streets, which is a relief after the terraces nearer town.

A house lived in for twenty years takes longer to reset

Condition sets the price, not room count, and Erdington throws up one complication: a house lived in for many years is often full. Wardrobes, garages, lofts and worktops all hold things, and working carefully around somebody’s belongings takes real time. The oven and the hood are the largest single variable, followed by how many bathrooms there are and how far mould has travelled into the sealant. A one-bedroom flat is no bargain simply for being small: the kitchen and the windowless bathroom account for nearly all the hours whatever the floor plan says. Photographs of both rooms sent over on WhatsApp give you a fixed price, never a range.

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Once a year for a settled semi, longer gaps for a small flat

A settled Erdington semi does well on one deep clean a year, usually spring or the run-up to Christmas, with ordinary cleaning carrying it between times. Flats with one or two occupants can genuinely go eighteen months to two years, because a small, lightly used property drifts slowly and never really collapses. Food premises around the High Street and Wilton Market want a proper degrease quarterly. A property being sold, cleared or handed over gets one visit and no schedule at all.