End of Tenancy Cleaning in Holland Park

Holland Villas Road is one of those streets where the houses are so wide that you could fit two normal London terraces inside each one. White stucco, five storeys, columned porticos, and the particular scale of buildings designed to make the people walking past them feel small. We were doing the first-floor flat — a conversion that occupied the entire first floor of a house that had been three flats since the 1960s. The front door was at pavement level and the communal staircase went up to the first-floor landing. Wide stairs, high ceiling in the stairwell, a window on the half-landing that let in so much light the dust was visible before we'd opened the flat door.

Three bedrooms, a double reception room at the front, a kitchen-diner, two bathrooms, and a hallway. The ceilings were 3.6 metres. The front reception had two sash windows that ran almost floor to ceiling — about 2.4 metres tall, 8-over-8, which meant 64 panes per window, 128 panes across the pair. These were the kind of windows that make a pane-by-pane clean feel like a career change. The flat was about 1,400 sqft. Furnished by the landlord — a long velvet sofa, two armchairs, a dining table that seated eight, a console, a bookcase, bedroom furniture throughout. The furniture was the kind that has a label on the underside from a Chelsea showroom. £5,200 a month.

The tenants were an American family — he worked in finance in the City, she was raising two children aged 5 and 3 while maintaining the kind of social schedule that Holland Park demands. They'd been there 2 years on a corporate relocation. Managed by Knight Frank Notting Hill.

Parked via ParkNow on Holland Villas Road. RBKC CPZ. Three of us on this one because a 5.5-hour job with 3.6-metre ceilings and 128 panes on the front windows alone doesn't work with two.

Kitchen-diner first. A full refit — about 15 sqm, handleless matt-lacquer units in a dark grey, integrated Gaggenau double oven, induction hob, integrated fridge-freezer and dishwasher. Carrara marble worktop — the real thing, not engineered. Two years of a family that employed a part-time housekeeper who did the day-to-day cleaning, which meant the oven was cleaner than expected. The main oven was moderate. Single dwell, one pass. The secondary oven was light — warming and proofing, not roasting. The marble worktop: wiped with pH-neutral product, barely damp. No pressure, no scrubbing. A faint wine-glass etch mark near the hob — a circular mark in the marble surface where an acidic liquid had sat. Cleaned as much as possible, the etch was in the stone. Documented. Sink — integrated Belfast — descaled with care around the brushed-nickel tap. Inside all the cupboards. Dishwasher interior cleaned. Floor — wide-plank engineered oak — mopped with specialist product. Behind the Gaggenau: pulled out on its runners, the wall behind wiped. A cocktail stick and a Calpol syringe. Kitchen total: 42 minutes.

Double reception room. The front room that goes on forever. Two sections separated by a wide arch — the front half with the massive windows, the rear half with the dining table. The windows first. Extension ladder for the top sections because 2.4-metre sashes require a step even to reach the middle bar. 128 panes between the two windows. Each pane cleaned. Each glazing bar wiped. The glass was the old kind — slightly wavy, uneven thickness, the kind that distorts the trees in the park across the road. You clean wavy glass the same way as flat glass but you check it from two angles because the distortion hides streaks. 38 minutes on the windows alone.

Two marble fireplaces — white Carrara with grey veining, one in each section of the room. Each surround wiped with pH-neutral product. The iron inserts dry-cleaned. The mantels — marble — wiped. One had the same kind of wine-glass etch as the kitchen worktop, a ring about 7cm across. Cleaned, documented. Cornicing — elaborate, about 25cm deep, at 3.6 metres. Dusted with extension tools. Picture rail dusted. The original timber floorboards — wide planks, lacquered — mopped with specialist product.

The furniture: velvet sofa vacuumed with brush attachment, under cushions — a hairband and a Haribo. Two armchairs vacuumed. Console wiped. Bookcase — each shelf wiped. Dining table wiped — the marble top on this one too, same treatment. 28 minutes on the furniture. Reception total: 74 minutes.

Bathroom one — the family bathroom. A walk-in shower with marble wall tiles, a freestanding bath with floor-mounted brushed-nickel taps, double basin unit with marble top, wall-hung toilet. Two years of hard water but the housekeeper had maintained the chrome and the bath. Moderate limescale on the shower marble and the glass. Descaler on the glass only — pH-neutral on the marble tiles, a different product, a different cloth. Brushed-nickel taps: citric-acid descaler, gentle, tested first on the underside. The floor — marble tiles — mopped pH-neutral. 26 minutes.

Bathroom two — an en-suite. Walk-in shower, wall-hung basin, wall-hung toilet. Matte-black fittings. Citric-acid descaler, tested on a hidden area of the shower riser before applying. Light limescale — single pass. 16 minutes.

Three bedrooms. Master: carpeted, vacuumed. A sash window — 6-over-6, 24 panes. The landlord's furniture — king-size bed, two bedside tables, a chest of drawers, a dressing table. Under the bed: vacuumed. Wardrobe — walk-in — wiped throughout. 18 minutes. Second bedroom — the 5-year-old's room. Carpet vacuumed. A sash window — 4-over-4. The wall beside the bed had three small gold star stickers at about 90cm. The kind a parent puts above a child's bed as a reward. Each star peeled, adhesive removed. The stucco-painted wall was slightly softer than modern emulsion and the adhesive needed more care than UPVC — slower, gentler, no scraping. 12 minutes. Third bedroom — the 3-year-old's room. Carpet vacuumed. Window cleaned. A small handprint on the wall at about 70cm. Cleaned. The paint beneath was fine. Under the cot: vacuumed. A dummy. Left on the dresser. 10 minutes.

Hallway: original wide-plank floorboards, lacquered. Mopped. Front door — original, heavy timber — wiped. Brass door furniture polished: letterbox, knob, and escutcheon. 6 minutes.

Total time: 5.5 hours. Three people. A 1,400 sqft first-floor flat in a stucco mansion on Holland Villas Road where the front windows had 128 panes, the ceilings were 3.6 metres, the marble fireplaces had wine-glass etch rings, the matte-black bathroom fittings needed a different descaler, and the 5-year-old had gold stars above her bed that took more care to remove from soft stucco paint than from UPVC. This is what Holland Park cleaning looks like. The rooms are bigger. The surfaces are more expensive. The agents are more thorough. The gold stars are the same.

Knight Frank's inventory clerk arrived three days later. She had a tablet with a digital inventory, the check-in photos from 2 years earlier, and a printed condition schedule that ran to 14 pages. She drove from the Notting Hill office.

Hallway: brass — she touched the letterbox. Smooth, warm. Floors: she looked down the length of the hallway. Even sheen.

Double reception: she started with the marble fireplaces. Finger-tested both mantels. The etch ring on the rear fireplace: she compared it to the check-in photo. At check-in, the marble had been clean. The ring was new. She photographed it, measured it, and noted it. That would be between the landlord, the deposit, and the relocation company. The windows: she checked one pane in each window — a lower pane, where the cleaning cloth's pattern would show if it hadn't been properly finished. Clean. Cornicing: she looked up with a torch. Clean. Floor: she crouched near the dining table and checked the area where chair legs slide. No scratches through the lacquer.

Kitchen: Gaggenau opened, torch in. Clean. Marble worktop etch ring: compared to check-in — same situation as the fireplace. New mark, photographed, measured. Brushed-nickel tap: she touched the base. No scale residue.

Family bathroom: marble wall tiles — she touched one. No product residue. Brushed-nickel tap bases checked. Glass angle-tested.

En-suite: matte-black fittings — she ran a finger down the shower riser. No descaler damage, no watermarks. Clean.

Five-year-old's room: the gold-star locations. She looked at the wall. Clean. She ran a finger across where the adhesive had been. Smooth — no residue. She'd seen sticker damage on stucco paint before in other W11 properties and she was checking that the removal hadn't pulled the paint. It hadn't.

Three-year-old's room: the handprint location. Clean. The dummy was on the dresser. Noted.

Eighteen minutes. Everything passed on the cleaning. The two marble etch rings were documented as new damage. The Calpol syringe and the dummy were noted as tenant property. The condition schedule was updated, photographed, and filed.

Deposit returned in full on the cleaning items within 14 days. The marble etch rings were handled separately through the corporate relocation company. The American family moved back to Connecticut. The flat on Holland Villas Road would be rephotographed and re-let within the month. The gold stars were gone from the wall and the dummy was gone from the dresser and the windows were clean enough to see the park through the wavy glass, and the next family to move in would walk up the same staircase and stand in the same reception and look through the same 128 panes at the same trees and think the same thing everyone thinks when they first stand in a Holland Park reception, which is that the room is bigger than it has any right to be.