End of Tenancy Cleaning in Cowley

We've cleaned enough Brunel student houses to know what we're walking into before the front door opens. The smell of degreaser is going to be the main event. The oven will tell the story of the tenancy. The fridge will have something green in the salad drawer. And somewhere in one of the bedrooms there'll be a poster hole or a blu-tack mark that the tenant forgot about until right now.

This one was on Cowley Mill Road — a Victorian mid-terrace about ten minutes' walk from the Brunel campus, four bedrooms across the first floor and the converted attic, a living room at the front, a kitchen-diner at the back, one shared bathroom on the first floor, a downstairs WC, and a paved yard with a bike rack and two wheelie bins. Four final-year students on a joint AST, 10 months at £1,850 a month split four ways. The landlord — a retired lecturer who'd been letting to Brunel students for about 15 years — was coming on Saturday morning to do the checkout.

Parked right outside on the street. No restrictions, no permits. Carried the kit straight in.

The kitchen told us everything. A freestanding gas cooker, Belling, single oven, four burners. Ten months of four people who cooked more than the average student house — someone in this group actually used the oven rather than just the microwave. The cavity had the uneven grease pattern of a household where one person roasted things and the others heated up pizzas: the back wall was heavily splattered, the sides were moderate, and the floor had a layer of carbonised crumbs mixed with grease. First dwell, 20 minutes. The back wall needed a second spray. The grill pan had baked-on cheese from what looked like months of toasties. Soaked it in the tray while we worked on the rest. Hob burner caps into the soak tray, enamel cleaned. The front-left burner had a spill ring that had gone from orange to brown to black over the course of the tenancy. Three passes. Total oven and hob time: 48 minutes.

The fridge. We opened the salad drawer. Green. Not lettuce-green, not even spinach-green — the particular shade of green that organic matter reaches when it's been in a sealed plastic drawer at 5 degrees for several weeks. Cleared, cleaned, gaskets done. The freezer needed defrosting — not a thick layer, just enough that the drawers were sticking. Door open, towels down, passive defrost while we worked.

The rest of the kitchen: worktops wiped, splashback tiles degreased. No extractor hood, just a wall fan that hadn't been cleaned during the tenancy — the grease film extended about a metre in each direction from the hob. We degreased the wall around the fan and the ceiling above it. Under the sink: three empty ketchup bottles and a sponge that had gone stiff. Floor mopped, behind the cooker cleaned out. Kitchen total: 65 minutes.

The shared bathroom. Four students, one bathroom, 10 months. The shower was over the bath with a plastic curtain on a rail. The curtain had mould on the bottom third. Binned it — a shower curtain is a consumable, same as a lightbulb. The bath waterline had a grey ring. Descaler, dwell, one pass. The taps had limescale at the base. Shower head was a bit blocked. Toilet had a calcium line below the waterline. Grout in the shower area had dark mould in several lines. Anti-mould spray applied, scrubbed line by line. Most came out. One line stayed faintly grey — documented as needing re-grouting rather than re-cleaning. 28 minutes.

The downstairs WC: limescale on the tap, calcium in the toilet, floor mopped. 8 minutes.

The living room. Carpeted, well-worn. Traffic paths from the door to the sofa, from the sofa to the TV position. All documented as wear, not dirt. Vacuumed throughout. The bay window cleaned. Behind the sofa position: crumbs, a pen, a charging cable, and a takeaway menu for a place on Cowley Road. No fireplace — this one had been removed and plastered over. Radiator done, skirting wiped. 15 minutes.

Four bedrooms. We went through them efficiently. The first-floor front bedroom: carpet vacuumed, wardrobe wiped inside, window cleaned. Poster holes in the wall above where the bed had been — not our scope, documented. The first-floor rear bedroom: same process, blu-tack residue on the wall above the desk position. Rolled and pulled it off, faint shadow in the paint documented. The two attic bedrooms: Velux skylights cleaned, slopes dusted where the ceiling met the floor, carpet vacuumed including the angles. One cobweb in the apex, cleared. The second attic room had a coffee mug ring on the windowsill that came off with general-purpose cleaner. 30 minutes across all four bedrooms.

Stairs vacuumed, bannister wiped, hallway mopped. 10 minutes.

Total time: 5 hours. Two people. The oven took 48 minutes. The kitchen total was 65 minutes. The bathroom was 28 minutes. Those are the numbers student houses produce.

The landlord came Saturday morning. He arrived with a clipboard, a proper torch, and the calm efficiency of someone who'd been inspecting student lets since before these tenants were born. He started in the kitchen. Opened the oven, shone his torch in. Checked the back wall where the heavy splatter had been. Ran a finger along the hob enamel where the dark spill ring had been. Opened the fridge, checked the salad drawer. He actually smiled at the empty, clean drawer — 15 years of student lets and a clean salad drawer was apparently still worth a reaction.

Bathroom: checked the grout, noted the curtain was gone — he'd buy a replacement, £6 off the total. Toilet torched. Taps checked. Bedrooms: a quick walk-through, checked the wardrobes, noted the poster holes as expected wear. Living room: carpet traffic paths accepted as wear. Hallway: mopped, clean.

Twenty minutes. His verdict: 'Better than most. I can work with this.' The shower curtain deduction was the only charge. Deposit returned via the DPS within 10 days — each tenant getting back their share minus about £1.50 for the curtain.

The value proposition for Brunel students is the same as it is for Kingston students, or any students anywhere. You can spend your last weekend before exams scrubbing an oven with supermarket spray and a J-cloth and still fail the checkout, or you can book a professional clean and know it's done. At £75 each split four ways, the maths is obvious. The oven alone would take you half a day and you still wouldn't get the back wall.