End of Tenancy Cleaning in Notting Hill

First-floor conversion in a stucco-fronted villa on one of the garden squares off Ladbroke Grove — the kind of building where the front steps are wide enough for a piano delivery and the front door opens into a communal hallway with the original encaustic tiles still intact. The flat occupied the first floor: two bedrooms, a bathroom, a reception room with a bay window overlooking the square garden, and a galley kitchen at the rear. A couple — both in media, one freelance, one at a production company in Soho — 2 years at £3,400/month. John D Wood managing from their Notting Hill office.

Meter parking on a side street off the square. Kit carried up the communal staircase — wide, original balustrade, but no lift.

The reception room was where the building showed its hand. About 22ft long with ceilings at roughly 11ft. A marble fireplace — white with grey veining, a carved surround and a simple mantel — sat against the interior wall. pH-neutral cleaner on every surface, working the carved detail with a soft brush. The marble had a faint ring mark on the mantel from a plant pot — cleaned, but a ghost remained in the stone. Photographed. Marble absorbs moisture through contact; the ring is in the stone, not on it.

The bay window overlooked the garden square. Three tall sash windows with working shutters. Each shutter panel wiped, both sides. Sash tracks vacuumed — 2 years of W11 dust, fine and grey. Glass cleaned. The ceiling rose above the centre of the room: decorative plaster, dusted with the extension brush from a step platform. Cornicing around the full perimeter — a deep moulding with a running leaf pattern. The room took 35 minutes on its own.

The galley kitchen at the rear. Compact — about 8ft by 6ft. An integrated Neff oven. Door off, glass out, spray, 20 minutes. One pass — 2-year media couple, lighter cooking than a family. Induction hob in a quartz worktop. Extractor recirculating, filter soaked. Fridge-freezer cleaned. Floor: original timber boards continuing from the hallway, specialist product.

Bathroom. Bath-shower combo with a glass screen. Limescale at ~260 ppm, 2 years. One pass on the waterline, one on the screen. Basin, toilet, floor done. Chrome polished. The walls had original plaster — no tiles behind the bath, just painted plaster. We checked for splash damage. One small area of peeling paint at the bath edge — photographed. That's old plaster in a bathroom that was never tiled. Building, not tenant.

Two bedrooms. Both with timber floors, both with the same 11ft ceilings. The master had a built-in wardrobe — wiped inside. The second bedroom had been used as a home office — desk residue wiped from the sill, cable channels vacuumed.

Communal hallway. Encaustic tiles swept and mopped. Front door wiped both sides. Landing swept. Not our floor, but our door.

John D Wood came the next afternoon. Their W11 lettings negotiator — she works the garden squares and knows every conversion in every villa. Reception: marble fireplace checked, ring ghost noted and accepted as stone porosity. Ceiling rose dusted. Shutters per panel tested. Cornicing inspected from two angles. Kitchen: oven torched. Bathroom: screen clear, peeling paint photographed and accepted as building issue. Floors walked. Passed.

Deposit back in 8 days. Full return. The couple were moving to a mews house two streets away — staying in W11, gaining a ground floor and a garage.

The ceilings and the marble were the story of this flat. At 11ft, every surface takes longer — the cornicing is harder to reach, the cobwebs are higher, and the dust settles on features that a normal-height room doesn't have. The marble ring and the peeling paint were both building issues: porous stone and untiled plaster. Our guide on deposit dispute evidence covers how we document period properties where the building's age creates conditions that look like tenant damage but aren't.