De Beauvoir Town is the quietest place on the round. It sits south-west of us in N1, on the far side of Kingsland Road, with Balls Pond Road along the top: a grid of early-Victorian villas laid out around De Beauvoir Square, much of it a conservation area and much of it still whole houses rather than flats. The list is the same list. A three bedroom move-out is £339 and a bedroom carpet is £36.
Original finishes, handled gently
Sash windows with old glass in them, deep skirtings, cornices, cast iron fireplaces nobody wants scrubbed back to bare metal. The rule here is the least aggressive thing that does the job, and asking twice rather than once. Anything painted with distemper, oiled rather than sealed, or finished in hard wax oil gets checked before a cloth goes near it, because hard wax oil wants its own gentle cleaner to keep its sheen.
Bare boards, loose rugs and the way that prices
Half the villas have had the fitted carpet up for years, which changes what gets booked. Room by room carpet work here is usually a flight of stairs at £41 and one or two bedrooms at £36 rather than a whole ground floor. The rugs are the real work. Each one is lifted and cleaned as its own item, £35 up to 3 sq m and £51 above it, and the floor underneath is done separately. Boards bring their own quirk, since dust lives in the gaps, so every gap gets a slow vacuum before the boards are washed.
Tall windows mean long drop curtains
The first floor windows in these villas are tall, so curtains here are mostly long drops at £42 rather than short ones at £35. Cleaning happens with them still hanging, so nothing can shrink up off the sill, using a small hand tool and a deliberately light touch that puts less water in than comes back out. Anything soft is billed one piece at a time on the same visit. £57 buys a two seater sofa, £33 an armchair, £35 a mattress and £13 a dining chair. Larger sofas have no set rate, since the covering and the arm shape settle whether it takes an hour or an afternoon.
Big rooms, longer visits, sometimes two cleaners
A villa is not a conversion. Ceilings are high, a through lounge at £61 genuinely is two rooms knocked into one, and there is often a kitchen down at garden level with its own stairs, which adds a floor to every trip with a bucket. Weekly slots here tend to be four hours rather than the basic three, at £23 per cleaner per hour, and the larger houses get a pair of cleaners rather than one person on a doubled slot.
Getting here
Cleaners arrive on the buses along Balls Pond Road at the top of the grid rather than by tube, because there is no Underground station anywhere near here.
What people ring about
Regular housework first, then one off cleans before family come to stay. Move-outs are rarer, since these houses change hands slowly, and when one does go it is usually a whole family home rather than a room in a share. A four bedroom move-out is £425, and a 90cm range cooker in one of these kitchens adds £31 to that, making £456. That is close to the opposite of what happens over towards Hackney Central, where the flats above the shops turn over several times a year. The full price list applies here without a penny of difference, and 020 8077 6967 reaches somebody from 8am to 7pm on any day.
Questions we get asked
Do you clean the big De Beauvoir houses as well as flats?
Yes. A four bedroom house move-out is £425 fixed. For weekly work we usually send two cleaners to a whole villa at £23 per cleaner per hour, which is quicker for you than one person taking twice as long.
Can you clean original wooden floors and old paintwork?
With the right product for the finish, yes. Tell us if the boards are oiled or waxed rather than lacquered, because an ordinary floor cleaner dulls hard wax oil.
How are rugs priced on a bare floor?
Each rug is its own item, £35 up to 3 sq m and £51 over it, and the floor underneath is cleaned separately. They are never folded into a room rate, because a rug and a fitted carpet need different tools.
Prefer the phone? 020 8077 6967, 8am to 7pm.