End of Tenancy Cleaning in Nunhead

A ground-floor flat in a converted Victorian terrace on Ivydale Road — one of the long residential streets that run between Nunhead Lane and the cemetery. The house was a standard SE15 two-storey terrace, split at some point in the early 2000s into a ground-floor flat and a first-floor flat. Our flat: two bedrooms, a living room at the front with a bay window and original tiled fireplace, a galley kitchen running along the side return, a bathroom at the back, and a private garden that the tenants described as 'out of control' — their words, not ours, and not our problem. The tenants — a couple, both teachers — had been there 16 months at £1,650/month. Managed by KFH Peckham. The agent was doing the checkout himself the following day.

Parked on Ivydale Road — Southwark CPZ, RingGo sorted. Carried the kit in through the shared front door (not our scope — the tenants had already confirmed), down the communal hallway, and into the flat through the internal front door.

The living room set the tone. A classic SE15 conversion front room: bay window with 4-over-4 sash, original tiled fireplace with a cast-iron insert in the chimney breast, alcove shelving on both sides, stripped and varnished pine floorboards, a picture rail running the perimeter. The room felt like every other Nunhead living room we've cleaned — it's not the premium period detail of a Highgate villa, but it's real Victorian stock with features that an agent will check.

Sash window first. Both sashes moved — these had been maintained. Lower sash lifted, upper sash lowered. Glass cleaned pane by pane — 8 panes per sash, 16 total. Glazing bars wiped. The runners vacuumed — a year and a half of dust, a dead moth, a few paint chips from where the tenant had bumped the frame moving furniture in. Meeting rail wiped. Sill wiped and the paint edge cleaned where dust had gathered along the reveal. 15 minutes.

The fireplace: green and brown geometric tiles in the surround — Victorian originals, in good condition. Each tile wiped with a damp cloth. The cast-iron insert: wiped dry. The hearth — a single stone slab — vacuumed and wiped. The mantel shelf dusted and wiped. The chimney breast above: dusted. Alcove shelves on both sides: 4 shelves each, every one wiped, front edges done. 10 minutes for the fireplace and alcoves combined.

Floorboards — stripped pine, varnished (not waxed). Mopped with a general-purpose floor cleaner — varnished boards are forgiving compared to waxed or oiled timber. The varnish had worn slightly on the main traffic path from the door to where the sofa had stood, but that's use, not dirt. Skirting boards wiped around the full room. Picture rail wiped — the ledge on top collects dust the same way a Highgate picture rail does, just on a smaller scale. Radiator wiped. Light switch, door handle. 15 minutes for the rest of the room.

Galley kitchen. About 8 sqm, running along the side-return extension — narrow, functional, with worktops on one side and the cooker on the other. A freestanding gas cooker — a Beko, 4-burner, single oven, probably 6 years old. The oven had seen 16 months of real cooking (teachers who eat at home — this oven was used). Door off, glass out, cavity sprayed. The cavity wasn't horrific, but it wasn't light-use either — steady mid-range grease rather than caked carbon. One dwell, 20 minutes, one pass. Clean. Hob: 4 burner caps and pan supports soaked. Enamel surface wiped — a couple of burnt-on drip marks around the back-right burner where the stock pot sat. These needed a targeted scrub with a non-scratch scourer. They came off.

The rest of the kitchen: laminate worktops — wiped. The wall behind the hob had a film of grease that you could feel rather than see — this is the weak extraction problem in conversion kitchens. A small extractor fan in the wall, no hood. We degreased the splashback tiles and the section of wall beside the hob. Cupboard fronts wiped (white melamine, showing their age but clean). Inside all cupboards and drawers. Under-sink area: cleared of the limescale from a slow drip that had been fixed but left a residue — descaler, wiped. Fridge-freezer (freestanding, tucked at the far end): shelves, drawers, gasket. The freezer had a thin ice layer on the back wall — door open, towel down, 10 minutes. Sink — stainless steel, single bowl — descaled and polished. Floor — vinyl — mopped, including behind the cooker and the fridge (pulled out from the wall for both). The back-door step: the flat opened onto the garden from the kitchen. The threshold was the dirt boundary — garden soil, leaf fragments, a smear of something green. Vacuumed, wiped, the door track cleaned. 35 minutes for the kitchen.

Bathroom. At the rear of the flat, next to the kitchen — a space that had been part of the original rear reception room before the conversion, partitioned off to create a bathroom. It was adequate but tight. A standard acrylic bath with a shower mixer and a glass screen (single panel, not a curtain — a good sign). The screen had moderate limescale — SE15 isn't as hard as Bromley but it's not soft either. Descaler applied, 10-minute dwell, one pass, squeegeed. Bath waterline: descaler along the length, one pass. Shower head: not blocked, just descaled. Basin — pedestal, wedged between the bath and the toilet. Descaled around the taps and the overflow. Behind the pedestal: dusted and wiped. Toilet — close-coupled, squeezed into the corner next to the wall. Cleaned inside, under the rim, around the base, behind the cistern. The gap between the cistern and the wall was about 4 inches — a microfibre cloth on a flat hand, wiped down. Tiles: wiped to the height of the tiling (half-height, white metro tiles — a common refit choice in SE15 conversions). Above the tiles: the painted wall had a few spots of mould in the top corner where the ventilation didn't reach — anti-mould spray, dwell, wiped. The extractor fan was a small in-wall unit, cover removed and cleaned. Floor — ceramic tiles — mopped. 25 minutes.

Two bedrooms. The front bedroom (the bay window room in the original house): carpeted, a built-in wardrobe in the alcove, the second sash window (matching the living room bay, 4-over-4). Window: 16 panes, same process, 15 minutes. Wardrobe wiped inside — shelves, rail, base (crumbs and dust). Carpet vacuumed — edges, under-bed, the corner behind the door. Radiator, skirting, light switch. 20 minutes total.

The second bedroom — at the rear, smaller, overlooking the garden. A single casement window (replacement, not original sash — the rear elevation of the conversion had been modified). Much quicker on the glass. Carpet vacuumed. No wardrobe — a rail on the wall, wiped. Radiator done. 12 minutes.

Hallway — the internal hallway of the flat, not the shared communal one. Short, narrow, connecting the front door to the bedrooms and living room. Carpet vacuumed, the coat hooks wiped, the fuse box cover dusted (agents check this sometimes), the smoke alarm wiped. 5 minutes.

Total time: 3.5 hours. Two people. Every room, every feature, every awkward angle.

The KFH agent came the next afternoon. One person, clipboard and pen, no tablet. He went room by room. Living room: checked the sash (ran a finger along the runner — clean), looked at the fireplace tiles (no damage), checked the alcove shelves, examined the floorboards. Kitchen: opened the oven (phone torch into the cavity), checked the splashback tiles, opened the fridge, ran a finger along the worktop seam, looked at the back-door threshold. Bathroom: checked the shower screen (held it at an angle to the window light — no marks), looked at the mould spot in the corner (clean, the anti-mould treatment had worked), tested the extractor fan. Bedrooms: windows, wardrobes, carpets.

He spent about 15 minutes. Ticked every box. No flags. He mentioned the oven in passing — 'someone actually cleaned this properly' — which suggested the last tenant at this address hadn't. KFH confirmed the checkout by email that evening.

Deposit returned via the DPS within 9 days. The teachers were already in their next flat in Brockley — the classic Nunhead-to-Brockley move that half of SE15's departing tenants seem to make.

That's Nunhead. It's not a penthouse above the Thames and it's not a detached house near a common. It's a flat in a converted terrace where the kitchen is narrow, the bathroom is tight, the sash windows are 140 years old, and the agent ticks boxes on a clipboard rather than uploading photos to a portal. The skill isn't navigating premium finishes — it's covering every surface in an irregular layout where nothing is square, nothing is standard, and the features are Victorian originals rather than high-spec installations. At £1,650/month, losing even part of the deposit to a cleaning issue is money these tenants can't afford to leave on the table.