End of Tenancy Cleaning in Thorneywood

End of Tenancy Cleaning for Thorneywood homes

Check-in reports here list outside space on a slope: the steps, a retaining wall, a yard sitting above or below the back door, a store under the front steps. None of it gets cleaned by the outgoing tenant and all of it is photographed.

Two things go wrong at check-out here and neither of them is inside the house. The first is the outside space. A check-in report on one of these terraces lists the steps, a retaining wall, a yard sitting a full storey above or below the back door, and on some of them a store built in under the front steps. All of that forms part of the property, none of it is what a tenant pictures when they think about cleaning, and a clerk photographs every bit of it. The second is what gets left behind. Taking a sofa or a mattress down a long flight of steps needs two people and a van that can stop outside, and when that does not happen the item simply stays where it is.

Thorneywood sits in NG3, under Nottingham City Council. Regular domestic cleaning takes most of the diary, in houses that are two storeys at the front and three at the back because of the fall of the land. Tenancy-end work is steady on the rented terraces lower down the slope. Deep cleans cluster in autumn, before the heating goes on and the house is shut up for winter.

What we run into on Thorneywood end of tenancy cleaning jobs

Once the rooms are empty the floors say what the house has been doing. Doors here often bind, because frames have moved with the ground under them, and a binding door sweeps an arc into the carpet in front of it as it drags. That arc holds grit, it sits darker than everything around it, and in a photograph it reads as a dirty carpet when it is really wear. We extract it, we say plainly which of the two it is, and we photograph it clean on the day, because a line in a check-out report saying the carpet was left marked is very hard to argue with a month after the keys have gone.

How a Thorneywood end of tenancy cleaning job actually runs

The timing of a tenancy clean here is decided by two appointments neither of us controls: the day the tenant actually finishes moving and the slot the inventory clerk has been given. Book the clean into the gap between them, not on top of either. Moving out of a terrace with steps takes longer than the tenant expects, so a clean booked for the same afternoon usually starts late and finishes in the dark, which matters because a clerk photographs by natural light and so do we. Ask for the electricity and water to stay on until the check-out is done, and leave the heating usable, because a cold house in winter holds moisture in a bathroom for hours after the walls have been wiped. Access is the other detail. If keys have already gone back to a letting agent's office in town, we need that arranged in advance rather than on the morning. Where the property is on a street with no room to stop, we ask for a longer slot rather than a cheaper one.

Who books it here

The gradient decides the job before anyone gets inside. Front doors sit at the top of a flight of steps, back gates open onto a bank rather than a level path, and equipment is carried up or down rather than wheeled. We build that into the time rather than finding it on the day.

We run Thorneywood on the same round as St Ann's, Sneinton and Porchester.

What we check on every Thorneywood job

The kitchen in these houses is nearly always in the single storey addition at the back, which gives it a lower ceiling, one outside wall and very little air movement. Extraction is usually a recirculating hood or nothing at all. What that produces over a tenancy is a greasy film that climbs the wall behind the hob and spreads across the ceiling above it, and because the ceiling is close it collects there rather than dispersing. It reads as smoke damage in a check-out photograph. On gloss or eggshell paint it lifts with a degreaser and dwell time. On old distemper or a chalky emulsion it will not, and scrubbing takes the paint off in patches, which looks worse than the film did. We test a small area first, work in overlapping sections so there is no tide line, and say plainly when the honest answer is that the ceiling needs painting rather than cleaning.

What the end of tenancy cleaning covers

A sample of what is included

• Kitchen: Washing machine drawer, rubber seal fold and filter
• Kitchen: Sink, taps and overflow descaled, bin cleaned inside and out
• Bathrooms: Shower screen seals and the tracks they sit in
• Bathrooms: Bath sealant line and overflow

That is a sample rather than the whole list. The full end of tenancy 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.