After Builders Cleaning in Porchester

After Builders Cleaning for Porchester homes

Rear extensions dug into a sloping garden, where the only way to the back is a side passage a metre wide. Every barrow of spoil and every bag of waste passes the kitchen door, so the mess travels the family's own route.

The standard project on this stock is a kitchen and dining extension across the back, and on a plot that falls away it is never a simple slab. The ground is either dug into the slope or the floor is built up on a raised base, so before anything goes up there is spoil to move, and the only route from the front of the house to the back is the passage between the two semis. That passage runs about a metre wide, with a gate at each end and the kitchen door opening into the middle of it. Everything, in and out, passes that door. Which is why containment here is a question about the passage and your own back door rather than about a sheet of polythene taped across an internal doorway.

Porchester sits in NG3, under Nottingham City Council and Gedling Borough Council. Bay-fronted semis in pairs, each with a garden at the front and a longer one behind. Two gardens mean soil entering the house at both ends, and because the plots sit slightly above or below the road, the ground between the back door and the lawn is usually the wettest part of it.

What we run into on Porchester after builders cleaning jobs

Making good the outside produces the mess people do not anticipate. Matching new render to old pebbledash means a wet mix thrown at a wall, and it splashes onto the paving, the glass and the frames below. Cement splash on glass is not dirt. Left to cure it etches the surface, and no amount of cleaning brings the clarity back, so it has to come off while fresh, softened and floated away rather than scraped. On the paving beneath, dropped mortar sets into the joints and then breaks up underfoot into a sharp grit that walks straight in through the back door for weeks afterwards.

How a Porchester after builders cleaning job actually runs

The other common project on these semis is the loft, and it makes a very different mess from a rear extension. A dormer at the back means scaffold up the side or the front, a skip on the drive or on the road with a permit from the council, and a new flight of stairs cut into the landing ceiling. That opening is the part that governs the cleaning. Once it exists the stairwell behaves like a chimney, everything the trades do in the roof travels down it, and the house is normally still lived in throughout. Containment therefore runs vertically rather than room by room: a screen at the foot of the new flight, the landing doors shut and taped, and matting on the half landing lifted and shaken daily instead of at the end of the job. It is also worth telling the attached neighbour before it starts, because drilling and joist work shake dust out of the shared structure into a house that has no part in the project.

Who books it here

The local reference points are Porchester Road along the ridge, the shops on it, and Carlton Road at the foot, which is usually enough for us to find a property without a postcode lookup.

We run Porchester on the same round as Mapperley, Carlton and Thorneywood.

What we check on every Porchester job

New windows arrive with a protective film on the frames, and on a dormer that has stood through a summer that film has usually been left on far too long. Sunlight bakes it, the plastic goes brittle and tears off in strips instead of peeling, and the adhesive stays behind as a grey band that has to be softened and worked away without letting anything reach the seals or the new render. The insulation is the second thing. Where the roof has been lined between the rafters and the old loft quilt still lies in the eaves cupboards, that quilt holds plaster dust like a filter, and every time an eaves door swings it puffs back into the finished room. Vacuuming achieves very little. It wants bagging and taking away, with the eaves boarding swept and wiped before any floor covering goes down, or the new room greys over again within weeks.

What the after builders cleaning covers

A sample of what is included

• Stage two, the detail clean: Inside all new units, cupboards and wardrobes
• Stage one, the rough clean: Protective films, stickers and tape residue
• Stage three, the final buff: Glass, chrome and floors
• Stage two, the detail clean: Skirting boards, architraves, switches and extract vents

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full after builders cleaning page sets out every section of the scope, what is deliberately excluded and why, how long it takes on each property size, and what tends to go wrong.