Follow York Road west out of Battersea and you are in Wandsworth Town, SW18, with the Southside shopping centre to the south and newer blocks towards the river. Between Old York Road and East Hill lie the Tonsleys, streets of small Victorian cottages close to Wandsworth Town station. The cottages and the riverside flats need quite different visits.
Cottage stairs
A cottage staircase is often short, steep and turning, and a short flight costs less than a full one: small stairs are £29, and odd extra steps are £4 each. Two bedrooms, a small front lounge and a small staircase come to £156. The narrow treads on a turn collect dust in the corner where the step meets the wall, and each of those gets the hand tool before the rinse.
Front doors onto the pavement
Where a front door opens straight into the front room, the first metre of carpet takes all the dust from the street, with no hall to catch it. That strip gets extra pre-spray and slower passes. A mat outside the door and another inside it cuts the problem down a good deal between cleans.
Boards over a void
Victorian cottages usually have timber floors over a ventilated void, and air coming up through the boards leaves grey lines along the skirting, the same filtration marks we find in the Battersea conversions. Those edges get a stronger pre-spray and hand-tool work, and they lighten a lot.
Drying a small house
Small houses dry fast if air can move through them. Open the front window and the back door, or a back window upstairs, and the draught runs the length of the house. Most rooms are walkable in two or three hours, and a cottage with synthetic carpet can be back to normal by lunchtime after a morning visit.
The riverside blocks
Flats in the newer blocks by the river usually have a lift and a concierge, so the kit goes up easily. If your building wants contractors booked in ahead, tell us when you ring and we will work to its rules. For rugs on hard floors, see rug cleaning.
| Clean | Price |
|---|---|
| Bedroom | £36 |
| Lounge | £43 |
| Through lounge | £61 |
| Stairs, per flight | £41 |
| Small rug (to 3m²) | £35 |
| Rug, over 3m² | £51 |
| Carpet per bedroom, alongside an end of tenancy | £29 |
| Living room carpet, alongside an end of tenancy | £36 |
| Stairs, with a move-out clean | £35 |
How a room is cleaned is set out under carpet cleaning, marks and spills under stain removal, and the full figures on the prices page.