Carpet cleaning in Wandsworth Common

South of Battersea Rise, along the Bolingbroke Grove side of Wandsworth Common, the houses get bigger, and many of them are double-fronted. A house on three floors has two flights of stairs and a landing at each turn, and on a visit here the stairs and landings often take longer than any single room.

Stairs in a big house

Each flight is £41 and each carpeted landing £9, with the entrance hall at £22. For two flights, two landings and the hall the figure is £122, and with three bedrooms added the total is £230. Stairs take more traffic than anywhere else in the house, so the treads get a dry pass by hand tool into the back of each step before the rinse, and the nosings get extra attention where feet scuff. If the stairs have a runner held with rods, it is cleaned in place and the bare wood either side is wiped dry as we go down.

Drying a house on three floors

A tall house can be dried from the top. Open a top-floor window and another one downstairs, and warm damp air rises up the stairwell and out, drawing drier air in below. Keep the internal doors open. With that draught most rooms are walkable in two or three hours; a house full of wool carpet takes longer, especially in winter.

Muddy paws off the Common

With the Common on the doorstep, dog walks bring mud in, and it ends up on the hall runner and the first few stairs. Let it dry and vacuum it off before you try anything else. The clay in wet mud smears, while dry mud mostly lifts out as dust. Whatever remains is treated as stain work during the clean.

Spare rooms

A spare room that hardly gets used still collects dust, and with its door shut a damp carpet in there dries slowly. Leave every door open while the house dries, including the ones you normally keep closed. A rug in the sitting room can go on the same machine at the same visit.

The carpet cleaning page covers the method step by step, and the full price list has every room and item.