Six jobs live on this site. Each one has a printed number behind it, and you are given that number while you are still on the phone. Nobody drives out to look at your flat before quoting, and nothing here is an opening figure designed to grow once a van is on your street.
Six jobs, and the unit each one counts in
| Job | Unit | Lowest figure | Highest figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| End of tenancy | Bedrooms on the agreement | £156 | £425 |
| Carpets and rugs | Rooms, flights and single rugs | £35 | £61 |
| Ovens and appliances | The appliance itself | £23 | £143 |
| Regular housework | Cleaner hours | £22 an hour | £24 an hour |
| One off deep clean | Team hours on site | £186 | £498 |
| Sofas, mattresses, curtains | Each piece | £13 | £57 |
Move-outs are banded, and here is what the band buys
£156 at a studio, £207 at one bedroom, £243 at two, £339 at three, £425 at four. What you are buying is the whole flat taken to the condition the check-in inventory records. Cupboards emptied and gone over inside, outside and along the tops. The fridge and freezer once they have been off overnight and thawed. Washing machine drawer, filter and door seal. Bathrooms taken right down through the scale. After that comes the tier clerks actually hunt through: skirtings and frames, switch plates, the insides of wardrobes, window runners, the inner faces of the glass, and floors right at the finish. Loft rooms let as bedrooms push the band up a step. Bathrooms never do, no matter how many the flat has.
The Dalston variation nobody else needs a paragraph for
Flats here are frequently let one room at a time, so the tenancy that ends is a bedroom rather than a property. The bands above assume the keys to the whole place are going back, so they do not describe that job at all. What happens instead is scoping. Your room, plus whatever share of the kitchen and the bathroom your agreement puts on you, quoted on the call against the £67 one off minimum. The count of rooms in the scope is the only thing that moves the figure, so a flat running two kitchens and two bathrooms simply has more rooms in it to price than a one bedroom flat does. That is arithmetic and nothing else. When the whole flat is handed back at once, the printed bands apply without alteration.
Floors, and why the machine works from the kerb
£36 a bedroom, £43 a living room, £61 for a front and back room opened into one, £41 for a flight with its landing, and single rugs at £35 or £51 either side of 2m². Hot water extraction puts heated solution into the pile under pressure and takes it back out on the same stroke, so the soil leaves the building instead of settling lower in the tuft. The unit itself stays out in the van because heat and suction are the heavy parts and the portable versions of both are weaker. On a Dalston job the practical consequence is a hose walked up a staircase, which is why the floor you are on matters at the booking. The rinse is softened and neutralised for nothing extra, since hard Thames Water dries into a pale pile as a chalky bloom.
Cookers, one appliance at a time
£77 a single oven, £110 a double, £114 a 90cm range, £143 a two oven AGA, £23 a hob, £28 an extractor. Everything that lifts out goes to a heated tank on the van: shelves, trays, runners, pan supports, fan cover. Anything bolted down is gelled, scraped and hand finished on the spot. The cavity, the seals and the inner faces of the door glass all come under that, on any model whose hinges allow the panes apart. There is no caustic left standing in the kitchen afterwards, so the cooker will do your dinner that night. AGAs need to be cold on arrival, so switch one off the evening before. Catalytic liners are hand work and never see the tank, because a scrubbed liner stops working.
Hours on the clock, and what ironing really trades against
£22 an hour per cleaner weekly, £24 fortnightly, which makes three hours £66 or £72. Nothing is charged for a call out, no VAT is added and there is no contract to sign, and the £67 one off floor has no bearing on a standing booking. Two hours is the shortest slot that makes sense to send anybody out for. Ironing at £12 an hour draws on hours already paid for, which makes it a swap rather than an addition. Time at the board is time the bathroom goes without, and the bathroom is where a Dalston visit usually needs it. Households that want both add an hour rather than borrow one.
Working out a team deep clean
The rate is £26 per cleaner per hour on site with a single £30 charge for machines and detergents, over a floor of two people for three hours. That gives £186, £238 and £290 for a pair over three, four and five hours, and £264, £342 and £498 for three people over three, four and six. The last of those is the largest booking taken and it will reset a whole house in a day. Put your own vacuum and products out and the £30 goes. Note that two people for six hours and three for four both land on £342, so pick on how long you want the flat full rather than on price. In a narrow conversion the smaller team frequently finishes sooner, because the hall is the only route between rooms.
Soft furnishings, item by item
£13 a dining chair, £33 an armchair, £35 a mattress, £57 a two seater sofa. Curtains bill on the drop, £35 short and £42 long, and stay on the pole throughout so there is no way for them to shrink up off the sill. The tall first floor windows in the N1 villas and the larger N16 terraces are where nearly all the long drops come from. All of it is done with a small hand tool rather than the full wand and kept deliberately light, so most of what goes in comes back out. Anything larger than a two seater has no printed rate, because the fabric and the shape of the arms decide whether it is an hour or most of an afternoon. Describe yours and a number follows. Leather gets no machine: a cleaner and then a conditioner, both by hand.
Four ways into a Dalston building
| The way in | Where you find it | What it costs the job |
|---|---|---|
| Narrow staircase, half-turn, no lift | Georgian houses on Dalston Lane, around Albion Square | Kit goes up in pieces, so a longer slot |
| Goods lift, often locked at weekends | Warehouse conversions behind the high street | Book midweek, or plan on the stairs |
| Door entry and a working lift | Rebuilt Holly Street blocks, the Kingsland Estate | Quick once inside, so leave a number that answers |
| Concierge and a visitor list | Dalston Square and the newer blocks over the station | Arrange the name, and the bay, in advance |
Three things that decide when a van can be outside
Zone C, which is Kingsland High Street, Dalston Lane and Ridley Road, is controlled Monday to Saturday from 8.30am to 6.30pm, while Hackney Central runs to 11pm and North Shoreditch as far as midnight. So the same evening slot is comfortable on one street and expensive three turnings away, and the zone gets checked against the address rather than guessed from the postcode. Second, the borough carries more than 140 traffic filters and around 50 school streets, every one camera enforced, which means the shortest route to your door is often not a lawful one and some roads shut twice a day in term time. Third, Ridley Road trades six days a week and the traders are loading from first light, so the block behind the high street is closed to a working vehicle until the afternoon. The fourth item is the water, and that one never appears as a line on an invoice, because descaling is simply what cleaning a bathroom means in Hackney.
Jobs that belong to another trade
Nothing above a two-step ladder, which rules out roofs, gutters and outside glass off the ground. No lofts, garages or gardens. Communal halls, stairwells and bin rooms sit under the freeholder or the managing agent, so they are not ours to take on. Waste beyond a bag or two wants a licensed carrier, and that crew needs to go in ahead of us rather than behind. Nothing gets started on a site the trades have not left. Damp makes the longest entry. Proofing and tanking, ventilation work, drying a floor out, taking up soaked underlay and relaying it, and mould that has gone in below the surface are jobs for builders, damp specialists and flooring fitters. You get told which of the three to ring. Silicone that has gone black right through wants cutting out and replacing rather than cleaning.
One list from E8 to E5
Nothing moves between Hackney Central, De Beauvoir Town, Stoke Newington, Haggerston, Hoxton and Clapton. What each of them tends to book sits on the areas page, and every figure including the £67 floor is set out on the prices page. Cleaners are out 8am to 8pm on all seven days at one rate, weekends included, and 020 8077 6967 reaches a person for the whole of that.
Questions we get asked
I am moving out at the end of the month. Which job is that?
The banded move-out clean, set by the bedrooms on your agreement, £156 through to £425. It is judged against an inventory rather than a clock. Floors are counted on top from £36 a room, and so is a cooker left through several tenancies.
Only my room is changing hands. How does that work?
It gets scoped instead of banded. Your room plus whatever share of the kitchen and bathroom your agreement puts on you, quoted while you are on the phone against the £67 one off minimum. The bands apply only when the whole flat goes back.
Will you do two jobs in the same visit?
Usually, and it often works out cheaper. Oven parts sit soaking in the tank at the kerb while the extraction machine runs indoors, so the two overlap instead of queueing, and the £67 floor only has to be met once across them.
Is a Sunday or an evening dearer?
Not by a penny. A single rate runs from 8am to 8pm on all seven days, which puts a Sunday evening on the same money as a Wednesday morning. No loading goes on for the day, the hour or how far out you live, and there is no call out charge.
Do you clean sofas, mattresses and curtains?
Each has its own figure: £13 a dining chair, £33 an armchair, £35 a mattress, £57 a two seater sofa. Curtains stay on the pole and bill at £35 or £42 by the drop. Larger sofas get quoted once you have described the covering and the arms.