Cleaning

[Mikey_1980]

So after the fun the fun of building comes the cleaning, for those of you that have finished already did you just clean it yourselves or has anyone hired in one of these builders cleaning companies and are they worth the money?

[jack]

My parents in law kindly gave us the gift of paying for someone to come in and do a post-build clean.

They did a pretty good job, although no-one told them not to scrub the hell out of our oak window frames with heavy duty cleaning products.  The frames are now in many places somewhat darker than they started, although it isn't noticeable unless you know what you're looking for.

The other thing is that even when the build is finished, residual dust seems to magically appear for weeks afterwards.  I have a (completely baseless) theory that it ends up adhering to ceilings and high up on walls.  You can't see it, but it's slowly released back into the house over time.

Personally I wouldn't have bothered, and would have been annoyed if I'd paid for it out of my own pocket.  YMMV.

[Guest Alphonsox]

I do remember chatting with one such company a year or so ago and being astonished at how much they charged, they wanted well over £1K for our place if I remember correctly (270m²). Even I could be persuaded to use a vacuum for that sort of money.

[jack]

Sounds about right (our place is almost exactly the same size).  We briefly looked into it and realised they were basically charging day-rates approaching those of skilled trades.

The people that did ours were friends of friends and I think a deal was done.

 

[Declan52]

Bought a cheap hoover from screwfix and me the wife and kids got stuck into it. A mist coat on the walls and ceilings will help to keep the dust down plus some weak PVA on the floor.