End of Tenancy Cleaning in Norwood

Portland Road runs parallel to the railway line and you can hear the trains from the front step if it's quiet, which in South Norwood on a Tuesday morning it usually is. The terraces on both sides are Victorian — two storeys, some with bay windows at the front, London stock brick, the kind of street where every fourth house has scaffolding up for something and every tenth has a skip outside. We were doing the ground-floor flat of a mid-terrace about halfway down.

Own entrance through the original front door — the upper flat used a side entrance. Two bedrooms, a reception room at the front, a kitchen at the rear, a bathroom, and a garden accessed through the kitchen door. The tenants were a couple with a 3-year-old, moving because they needed a third bedroom. Two years at £1,550 a month. Managed by Oaks Estate Agents South Norwood.

Parked on Portland Road. Free, no restrictions, no complications. The nearest match-day zone was three streets away and Palace weren't playing until Saturday.

Kitchen first. A rear room, about 7 sqm, with the original window looking out to the garden. A freestanding gas cooker — a Belling, single oven, four burners. Two years of a young family cooking every day. The oven was moderate — the steady grease of a household that did spag bol and roast chicken and fish fingers in roughly equal measure. Double dwell on the cavity. One pass on everything except the roof, which needed a second. Hob cleaned, burner caps soaked. One cap had a blackened spill ring from something that had boiled over and been left.

A wall fan that worked but didn't do much. Tiles behind the hob had a faint film extending about 25cm above the splashback. Degreased. Worktops — laminate — wiped. Sink descaled. The mixer tap had a moderate limescale collar after 2 years. Single descaler application cleared it. Fridge-freezer cleaned. Inside all the cupboards. Under the sink: a carrier bag full of other carrier bags, a bottle of bleach, and a small toy giraffe. Floor — vinyl — mopped. Behind the cooker: pulled out, wall degreased. Kitchen total: 30 minutes.

The back door to the garden. A timber door with a single glazed panel. The door track had the usual SE25 garden debris — dried mud, leaves, a couple of snail shells. Cleaned. Through the door you could see the garden — a patio, a patch of lawn worn bald in the middle from the toddler, a low fence, and beyond it the back of the next street's terraces. The country park was somewhere to the south-east but you couldn't see it from here. You could hear a woodpecker if the trains weren't running. 3 minutes.

Reception room. A front room with a bay window — 3-pane sash, so 24 panes across the bay. Each pane cleaned, glazing bars wiped. The sashes had been painted shut at some point but that wasn't our concern. Carpeted, vacuumed. A gas fire in a modern surround — wiped. Radiator done. Skirting wiped. A small scuff on the wall at about 90cm — the height of a push-along toy hitting the same spot repeatedly. Cleaned. The paint beneath was scuffed but not broken. Documented. 14 minutes.

Bathroom. A white suite — bath with an electric shower over and a plastic curtain, pedestal basin, close-coupled toilet. Two years of Croydon hard water and a family of three including a toddler who had bath-time every evening. The bath waterline was thick. Double descaler, manual attention on the stubborn section around the plug end where the soap and limescale had combined into a paste. Taps — moderate crusts. Shower head — partially blocked. Descaled and cleared. Toilet — calcium below the waterline. Proper soak, manual scrubbing. Grout in the shower area: mould at the sealant line, anti-mould spray, scrubbed. Most came off. A section of sealant near the taps was yellowed and pulling away from the tile. Documented as maintenance. Floor — vinyl — mopped. 26 minutes.

Two bedrooms. Front bedroom: carpeted, vacuumed, the other bay window — matching the reception, 24 panes again. Same routine. Built-in wardrobe wiped inside. 14 minutes. Back bedroom — the child's room. Carpet vacuumed. A casement window — UPVC, quick. The wall beside the cot had a small patch of something at about 60cm. Investigated — dried banana. Cleaned with a damp cloth, it came off. The windowsill had three sticker residue patches where farm animal stickers had been removed. The tenant had peeled the stickers off themselves before moving. They'd done a decent job — the stickers were gone, but the adhesive outlines remained. Each patch treated with adhesive remover. The UPVC cleaned up easily. 10 minutes.

Hallway: original timber strip floor — not boards, the narrow strips that a lot of these terraces have. Mopped with general-purpose floor cleaner. Front door wiped. 5 minutes.

Total time: 3 hours. Two people. A 2-bed ground-floor Victorian conversion on a street where you can hear the trains and the woodpeckers and occasionally the Crystal Palace crowd if the wind is right on a Saturday. The bathroom took 26 minutes because toddler bath-time in hard water creates its own particular layer. The bay windows took 28 minutes across two rooms. The oven took 18 minutes. The dried banana took about 30 seconds.

Oaks' negotiator arrived three days later. He walked from their South Norwood office on the high street, which told you the branch was local and the negotiator knew the streets. He came in through the front door.

Kitchen: oven opened, phone torch in. Roof checked where the second pass had been. Clean. Burner cap: he looked at the blackened ring. Ran a finger across. It was clean but the blackening was in the enamel. He noted it. Tap base: touched. Smooth. The toy giraffe was on the counter next to the keys.

Bathroom: he went straight to the bath plug end where the stubborn paste had been. Finger-tested. Smooth. Shower head: he looked at the nozzles but didn't turn it on. Clear. Toilet: crouched, looked below the waterline. Clean. Sealant: he looked at the section pulling away, photographed it, wrote something on his tablet. Maintenance.

Child's room: he looked at the windowsill where the farm animal sticker residue had been. Ran a finger along. Smooth. The dried-banana location on the wall: he didn't check it. He checked the carpet instead — the area around the cot where a toddler eats and drops things. Clean.

Push-toy scuff on the reception wall: he looked at it. Photographed. Noted as fair wear.

Ten minutes. Everything passed on the cleaning. The enamel blackening, the sealant, and the wall scuff were noted separately. None charged as cleaning items.

Deposit returned in full within 9 days. The family moved to a 3-bed terrace on Oliver Avenue — still SE25, still South Norwood, the extra bedroom they needed, a bigger garden for the toddler who wasn't a toddler for much longer. The toy giraffe went with them. The farm animal stickers had already gone ahead in spirit if not in adhesive.