End of Tenancy Cleaning in Wapping

New Crane Wharf sits on Wapping Wall, a few minutes' walk from the Prospect of Whitby and about as close to the Thames as you can live without sleeping on a houseboat. The building is a Victorian warehouse converted in the early 1990s — the kind of conversion where the architect kept everything that made the building interesting and fitted a modern flat inside the industrial skeleton. From the street you see brick, iron, oversized windows, a porter's entrance between two loading bays that now have glass panels in them. From the second floor you see the river.

Two bedrooms, an open-plan kitchen-living room facing the Thames, a bathroom, a hallway with the original timber floor. The tenants were a couple who both worked at a bank in the City — a 12-minute commute from Wapping Overground. Eighteen months at £3,400 a month. Managed by Savills Wapping. Checkout with their negotiator booked for three days later.

Parked on a side street off Wapping Wall via pay-by-phone. Carried the kit across the cobbles to the entrance. The porter buzzed us in and held the goods lift. Up to the second floor with everything.

The living room first, because the living room is the reason anyone pays £3,400 a month for a 2-bed flat in Wapping. Three large windows facing south toward the Thames, each about 2 metres tall and 1.5 metres wide. Through them, the river, Rotherhithe on the opposite bank, and downstream toward Canary Wharf. The glass needed to be right because the river was right there — moving water, reflecting light, showing up every fingerprint and every streak. Professional glass cleaner, vertical strips, squeegee finish, each window done individually. The left window had a mark near the bottom corner where something had been taped to the glass — a Christmas card, maybe, or a photo. Adhesive residue, cleaned with a targeted product, the glass checked at angle afterward. 24 minutes for the three windows.

The brick. Two full walls of exposed Victorian brick — the external wall facing the river and the internal partition to the bedroom. Raw, unsealed, the mortar lines slightly recessed. Dust sits in every groove. We vacuumed both walls gently with the brush attachment, working from top to bottom. One of those jobs where you can see the difference immediately — the brick goes from muted and grey to warm and red as the dust comes off. No product, no water. 14 minutes.

The beams. Four original timber beams running across the ceiling of the living room, each about 30cm square. Wiped carefully with a dry cloth. One beam had a cobweb tucked into the junction with the brick wall. 6 minutes.

The kitchen occupied one end of the open-plan space. A modern refit — not the original 1990s kitchen but something installed in the last few years. Integrated Neff oven behind a handleless door, induction hob in a stone worktop, integrated fridge-freezer and dishwasher. The tenant had cooked moderately — the oven was light, a Sunday-evening kind of pattern. Single dwell, 15 minutes, one pass. Hob clean — two faint pan-drag marks, ceramic product, gone. Worktops wiped. The critical moment in every Wapping warehouse kitchen is the interface between the modern units and the exposed brick. A 30cm gap between the top of the wall units and the brick wall above. Degreaser cannot reach that brick. We masked the brick edge with cling film before degreasing the extractor and the top of the units. Removed the masking. Clean units, untouched brick. 36 minutes for the whole kitchen.

Hallway. Original timber plank floor — wide boards, dark-stained, showing their age. Barely-damp mopped with specialist product. The front door was a heavy fire door fitted during the conversion. Wiped. 5 minutes.

Two bedrooms. The master: carpeted, vacuumed, window cleaned — a smaller window than the living room but still facing the river. Built-in wardrobe wiped inside. 12 minutes. The second bedroom: carpeted, vacuumed, window cleaned — facing the internal courtyard. A desk had been here and the carpet showed the four compression marks from the chair legs. Not damage, just pile compression. Documented. 10 minutes.

Bathroom. A modern refit — walk-in shower with a frameless glass panel, wall-hung basin, wall-hung toilet, heated towel rail, stone floor tiles. The shower glass had light limescale — 18 months of London water, the tenants had been reasonably good about squeegeeing. Single descaler application, dwell, one pass. Taps descaled. Toilet light. Stone tiles mopped with pH-neutral product. 20 minutes.

Total time: 4 hours. Two people. A 2-bed warehouse conversion where the exposed brick took 14 minutes, the beams took 6 minutes, the river glass took 24 minutes, and the brick-protection masking in the kitchen took an extra 5 minutes that a plasterboard kitchen wouldn't need. These are the Wapping-specific minutes. Everything else — the oven, the bathroom, the bedrooms — cleaned like any premium London flat.

Savills' negotiator arrived three days later. She knew New Crane Wharf well — she'd let several flats in the building and understood the conversion. Living room: she went straight to the windows and checked the glass against the river. Stood at the left window where the adhesive mark had been and looked at the glass at an angle. Clean. Brick walls: she ran a hand along the surface at shoulder height. No dust transfer. She looked at the beam junctions. No cobwebs.

Kitchen: oven opened, phone torch in. The hob checked where the pan marks had been. She looked at the gap between the wall units and the brick above — the transition zone where degreaser could have damaged the brick. Clean units, clean brick, no staining. She noted it without comment. The agents who cover Wapping warehouse conversions know about that gap.

Bathroom: shower glass angle-tested. Stone floor checked. Bedrooms: carpet compression documented and photographed. She wrote 'normal wear' on her clipboard.

Thirteen minutes. Everything passed on the cleaning items. The carpet compression was noted and not charged.

Deposit returned in full within 8 days. The couple moved to a 3-bed in Limehouse — bigger flat, slightly lower ceiling, no beams, no cobbles outside the front door. They'd lived for 18 months in a building where the walls remembered being a warehouse and the windows remembered the river, and they'd paid a premium for that memory. Our job was making sure the memory was clean when they left.