End of Tenancy Cleaning in Yiewsley

Otterfield Road is a long residential street of post-war terraces that runs parallel to the canal on the Yiewsley side of West Drayton. The houses are the same on both sides — three bedrooms, a front lounge, a rear kitchen-diner, a bathroom upstairs, a garden out the back, and a small front garden that most people have paved over for a car. They were built in the 1950s and they look it — functional, no frills, the kind of house that was designed to house a family quickly and has been doing exactly that ever since.

The tenants were a family of four — two adults, two children under 10. Both parents worked at Heathrow. Shifts. The kind of household where the oven gets used every day because there's no time to eat out and takeaway costs more than cooking. Two years at £1,650 a month. Managed by the landlord directly via OpenRent. The landlord lived in Uxbridge and would be coming round for the checkout himself.

Parked on the driveway. Free, no restrictions, no complications. Carried the kit in through the front door.

Kitchen-diner first. About 12 sqm — the original kitchen wall had been knocked through at some point, opening it into the dining area. A freestanding gas cooker — a Hotpoint, single oven, four burners. Two years of a shift-working family cooking every day. The oven was heavy. Dark on the roof, dark on the back wall, the bottom had a baked crust from two years of roasting tins sitting in the same position. The grill pan was worse than the oven. Double dwell on the cavity. A targeted third pass on the roof. The grill pan soaked for the entire duration of the kitchen clean and still needed manual scrubbing afterward. Total oven and grill time: 38 minutes.

Hob cleaned — all four burner caps into the soak tray. Two spill marks on the enamel, one of them old enough that it had darkened to a permanent discolouration. Cleaned to the best finish achievable, the darkened mark documented. Worktops wiped — laminate, showing every mark. Sink descaled — the mixer tap had a solid limescale collar after 2 years. Fridge-freezer cleaned — the freezer had a thick ice layer and the drawer runners were stiff. Defrosted, cleared, drawers wiped. Inside all the cupboards. Under the sink: bleach, a worn brush, three takeaway menus, and a fidget spinner. Floor — vinyl — mopped. Behind the cooker: pulled out, the wall behind degreased, a lost fridge magnet shaped like a plane. Kitchen total: 50 minutes.

The back door to the garden. A UPVC door with a threshold strip that had mud, grass clippings, and a small stone wedged in the door track. Vacuumed, cloth pulled through. 3 minutes.

Front lounge. Carpeted, vacuumed. UPVC bay window cleaned. A gas fire in a modern surround. Wiped. Radiator done. Skirting wiped. A crayon mark on the wall at child height — about 60cm up, a green line approximately 15cm long. Cleaned with a damp cloth, most of it came off. The remainder was in the paint surface. Documented. 12 minutes.

Bathroom. A white suite — bath with an electric shower over and a plastic curtain on a rail. Pedestal basin. Close-coupled toilet. Two years of Hillingdon hard water and a family of four. The shower head was partially blocked — limescale in the nozzles. Descaled and cleared. The bath had a thick waterline ring from the combination of hard water and bath products. Double descaler application. Taps — white crust at the bases, standard treatment. Toilet — heavy calcium below the waterline, proper soak, manual attention on the back section. Grout in the shower area: mould at the sealant line, anti-mould spray, scrubbed. Some staining remained in the old sealant. Documented as maintenance rather than cleaning. Curtain removed and rehung. Floor — vinyl — mopped. 28 minutes.

Three bedrooms. Master: carpeted, vacuumed, UPVC window cleaned, wardrobe wiped inside. 10 minutes. Second bedroom: same process. 8 minutes. Children's room: carpet vacuumed — a juice stain near the radiator, spot-treated, lightened. UPVC window cleaned. Sticker residue on the radiator. Not the windowsill this time. The radiator. Somebody had stuck three small aircraft stickers onto the flat panel of the radiator at about the height a 7-year-old would reach. Two were partially melted into the paint from the heat cycling over two winters. Each one scraped carefully — the melted ones needed a plastic scraper and adhesive remover. The paint beneath was discoloured where the sticker had protected it from the heat-induced yellowing of the surrounding surface. Documented. 14 minutes.

Stairs and hallway: vacuumed. Hallway floor — vinyl — mopped. Front door wiped. 6 minutes.

Total time: 3.5 hours. Two people. A 3-bed post-war terrace with a heavy oven, hard water, a crayon mark, and three aircraft stickers melted onto a radiator. No period features. No marble. No sash windows. Just a family house that needed cleaning properly after two years of being lived in by people who work hard, cook every day, and have children who stick planes on radiators because they live near Heathrow and planes are what they see.

The landlord arrived the next morning. He drove from Uxbridge in a van, which told us he was the kind of landlord who does his own maintenance. He had a printed checklist — two pages, room by room — and a LED torch. Not a phone torch. A proper torch. That usually means he's been doing this for a while.

Kitchen: oven opened, torch in. He looked at the roof where the triple pass had been. Clean. Hob: the darkened enamel mark — he looked at it, touched it, and said 'that's been there.' He knew his own property. Fridge-freezer opened. He checked the drawer runners. Smooth. Floor: he looked at the area behind where the cooker sits. Clean. The plane-shaped fridge magnet was on the counter — we'd left it there.

Bathroom: he went straight to the toilet and torched below the waterline. Clean. Shower head: he turned it on and checked the spray pattern. Even. Sealant mould: he looked at it, took a photo, and said 'that's the sealant, not the tile.' He'd seen it before.

Children's room: he looked at the radiator where the aircraft stickers had been. The paint discolouration. He ran a finger over it. He didn't say anything, but he took a photo. That would be between him and the deposit.

Crayon mark on the lounge wall: same. Photo, no comment.

Twelve minutes. All cleaning items passed. The crayon remnant, the hob discolouration, the sealant staining, and the radiator paint marks were all photographed and noted as either pre-existing or wear. No deductions on the cleaning.

Deposit returned in full within 11 days. The family moved to a 4-bed on Cherry Orchard, about half a mile away — still Yiewsley, still UB7, still near the airport. The aircraft stickers would probably appear on a new radiator before the boxes were unpacked. In Yiewsley, where the flight path is overhead and the planes come in every 90 seconds on a busy day, sticking aircraft to things is what children do. It's not damage. It's geography.