End of Tenancy Cleaning in Covent Garden

The door was between a Japanese ceramics shop and a place that sold artisanal chocolate. A narrow door, painted black, with a buzzer panel and a number that didn't appear on any shopfront. Through the door, a steep staircase — uncarpeted, painted white, the treads worn smooth in the middle from 150 years of feet going up and down — to the first-floor landing and the flat's own front door. The first challenge of every Covent Garden period conversion is getting the equipment up the stairs. The second challenge is cleaning the flat. In that order.

One bedroom, an open-plan kitchen-living room at the front, a bathroom, and a hallway that was really just the space between the front door and the other rooms. The front windows looked out onto Earlham Street and the Seven Dials junction. Through the secondary glazing you could see the shoppers and the street performers and the tourists looking at their phones, and through the secondary glazing you couldn't hear any of them. That was the trade. The flat was about 450 sqft and it rented for £2,600 a month furnished.

The tenant was a creative director at an agency on Dean Street. She'd walked to work every morning for 14 months and walked home past the theatres every evening. No car, no bike, no commute. The flat was furnished by the landlord — a sofa, a dining table for two, a bed frame, bedside tables, a desk. High-quality mid-century reproductions. Managed by Tavistock Bow.

Parked via a loading bay on Shaftesbury Avenue — 20 minutes maximum, which meant we unloaded fast and moved the van to a metered space on Parker Street. Carried the kit up the stairs. The vacuum went up first because it's the heaviest.

The kitchen-living room. The kitchen occupied one wall — a modern refit with integrated appliances behind handleless white units. Integrated Neff oven, induction hob, integrated fridge, integrated washing machine. The tenant had cooked lightly — salads, pasta, the kind of cooking that happens when you live in Covent Garden and every restaurant in London is within walking distance. The oven was light. Single dwell, 12 minutes, one pass. Hob clean — one faint mark from a ceramic pan. Quartz worktop wiped. Sink descaled. Inside all the cupboards. Floor — engineered oak — mopped with specialist product.

The furniture. The sofa: vacuumed with the brush attachment, under the cushions cleared. A hair tie and a receipt from the chocolate shop downstairs. The dining table: wiped. The desk: wiped, monitor stand wiped, a pen cup with three pens and a dried-out marker. The floor beneath each piece: moved where possible, cleaned, replaced. 15 minutes for the furniture.

The windows. Two large sash windows at the front, each with a secondary glazing panel on the inside. Four panes on the sash, one panel on the secondary unit. That's six surfaces per window, twelve surfaces total. Each cleaned individually. The secondary glazing panels needed cleaning on both the inner and outer faces, then clipped back into place. The sash panes cleaned through the gap. This is the Covent Garden glass routine — it takes twice as long as normal glazing and the result has to be clean from both sides because the light from Earlham Street comes through both layers. 14 minutes.

Ceiling: about 3 metres. A picture rail and a simple cornice. Dusted with extension tools. 4 minutes.

Bathroom. A modern refit — walk-in shower with a frameless glass panel, wall-hung basin, wall-hung toilet, stone floor tiles. The shower glass had light limescale — 14 months of a single person using it daily. Single descaler application, one pass. Taps descaled. Toilet light. Floor mopped. 16 minutes.

Bedroom. Carpeted, vacuumed. The landlord's bed frame and bedside tables: wiped. Under the bed: vacuumed. The window — a single sash with secondary glazing at the rear of the building, facing the back of the next building. Quieter side, less light, but the same double-pane routine. 6 surfaces. 10 minutes.

Hallway: engineered floor mopped. Front door wiped. 3 minutes.

Total time: 2.5 hours. Two people. A 450 sqft furnished 1-bed above a shop on Earlham Street. The oven took 12 minutes because the tenant ate out most of the week. The furniture added 15 minutes. The secondary glazing added about 10 minutes on top of what normal glazing would take. The stairs added about 5 minutes to the carry-in. A compact flat that costs £2,600 a month and takes 2.5 hours to clean — the per-square-foot cleaning time in Covent Garden is higher than anywhere else in our coverage area because every surface is close together, every piece of furniture fills the space, and every window has two layers of glass.

Tavistock Bow's negotiator arrived two days later. She covered the Seven Dials and Opera Quarter patch and knew this building — she'd let the flat above this one earlier in the year.

She came up the stairs without commenting on them, which meant she was used to them. Kitchen: oven opened with her phone torch. Clean. She checked the handleless units for degreaser drips on the cabinet faces — a specific check for white handleless kitchens where product residue shows against the finish. Clean. Quartz worktop finger-tested.

Furniture: she checked the sofa arms, looked at the desk surface, opened the pen cup and looked inside. Clean. The hair tie and the receipt were on the counter with the keys.

Windows: she stood at the front window and looked at the secondary glazing at an angle. Then she unclipped one panel and looked at the inner face. Clean. That's the check that only happens in a secondary-glazed flat — the agent confirming that the inner face of the secondary unit has been cleaned, not just the outer face that's visible from the room. She clipped it back.

Bathroom: shower glass angle-tested. Bedroom: under-bed checked by lifting the valance. Hallway: floor checked.

Nine minutes. Everything passed. The pen cup noted as tenant property. Report filed with Tavistock Bow's system.

Deposit returned in full within 6 days. The creative director moved to a 2-bed in Fitzrovia — slightly more space, slightly less noise, still within walking distance of Dean Street. The flat on Earlham Street waited for its next tenant, secondary glazing in place, furniture positioned, the smell of artisanal chocolate drifting up from downstairs, which is either a feature or a hazard depending on how you feel about chocolate at 9am.