interior cleaning
The inside face is the half most window cleaners quote around. It is also the one you actually look through.
Ask for a window clean here and the price you get back is usually for the outside only. That made sense in a country where a window is a window. It makes much less sense in a villa where the glass is effectively the wall: full-height sliders down one whole side, picture windows framing the garden, glass balustrades around the stairs and the terrace. In a house like that the inside face is most of what you see, and it is the face you are looking through every day.
It also gets dirty differently. The outside collects red dust, salt and hard water. The inside collects hand marks around the handles, dog noses along the bottom third, a fine cooking film that drifts out of an open-plan kitchen and settles on everything, sun cream off shoulders and forearms, and dust that comes in every time the doors are open, which here is most of the year. None of it is dramatic on its own. Together it takes the edge off the light in the whole room, which people usually only notice when one pane has been done and the one next to it has not.
how we do it
This is the real difference between inside and outside work. Floors covered, furniture moved back or protected, soft furnishings kept clear, and everything put back where it was. Anyone who turns up to clean interior glass without protecting the room is going to cost you more than the clean was worth.
The debris in a slider track is dry, and it comes out far more easily before anything wet reaches it. Do the glass first and you push that dirt into a paste and then chase it around the frame.
Interior glass is judged in a way exterior glass never is, because you are standing two feet from it in a bright room. Every pane gets worked and then checked from an angle with the light behind it, which is the only way to actually see what is left.
Mirrors, shower screens, glass tables, shelves and cabinet fronts, done in the same visit. They are the same skill and the same trip, and leaving them is a strange place to stop.
Paint specks from a decorator, tape residue, silicone smears, builders' film and hard-water spotting on a shower screen are not dirt and do not respond to being cleaned harder. They get identified and treated on their own terms, or flagged if they have gone past that.
Frames wiped, sills done, anything moved put back, floors clear. You should not be able to tell we were in the room except by the glass.
what is included
Shower glass that has gone permanently hazy is not dirty. Hard water here leaves mineral deposit that bonds to the surface, and once it has been left long enough it etches into the glass itself. A clean takes off what is sitting on top and the haze underneath is still there. We can restore a great deal of it, but that is separate work with a separate price, and we will tell you at the survey which of the two you are looking at rather than cleaning it twice and blaming the glass.
Two other things we will not do. We do not move heavy furniture, wardrobes or anything with a lot of electronics behind it, so we clean up to those rather than shifting them. And we do not take blinds or curtains down to reach the glass behind them; if they need to come down, it is worth arranging that before we arrive so the visit is not spent waiting.
how we keep the standard
Every job is checked against the standard for that surface before the van moves, by someone who did not do the cleaning. If it is not right we put it right before you have to ask.
We look at the property, then give you a price. What we agree at the survey is what you pay, with no extras invented once we are on site.
You can explain what you want and be understood, and we follow up afterwards to check you are happy. Not a sales call.
where we work
We cover Quinta do Lago · Vale do Lobo · Vilamoura · Almancil · Loulé · Quarteira · Faro · Albufeira · Carvoeiro, and the surrounding area. If you are just outside it, ask anyway and we will tell you honestly whether we can look after you properly.
questions
Yes, and most people do. It is one trip, one set-up and one price, and it works out cheaper than booking the two separately. It is also the only way to properly judge the result, because a pane is only actually clean when both faces are.
No. Access is arranged with you beforehand and a great many of our clients are not in the country when we visit. If you would rather be there for the first one so you can say how you like things done, that is usually worth doing.
Yes, before anything else happens. Floors get covered, furniture is moved back or protected, and everything goes back where it was. It is the part of the job that separates interior work from exterior work, and it is not an optional extra.
Often, but it depends what has happened to it. If the mineral deposit is sitting on the surface it comes off. If it has etched into the glass it is a restoration job rather than a clean, and in the worst cases the screen is past saving. We will look at it and tell you honestly which one you have.
Less often than the outside. Twice a year suits most households, and more if you have dogs, an open-plan kitchen with glass doors near it, or small children at handle height. A holiday let is usually worth doing at the start and the end of the season.
the rest of the inside