Forest Hill is SE23, up the hill west of Catford, and the houses are bigger. Larger Victorian villas, a good share of them cut into flats, and a great many more stairs than we deal with down on the flat. That last point is the one that shows on your bill, because carpet is priced by the room and stairs are £41 a flight, so a three storey house with a loft conversion has three flights in it rather than one.
Flights, and the arithmetic nobody expects
Three flights on their own is £123, and their three landings add £27, before a single bedroom is counted. Add three bedrooms at £108 and a living room at £43 and a whole-house carpet clean here is £301, which is a very different number from the hall-and-a-flight booking, billed at the £67 minimum, that is typical in a Catford terrace. Give us the flight count when you ring rather than the bedroom count, because on these houses the bedroom count tells us almost nothing useful about the size of the job.
The hill is a real factor
The roads climb hard in places, worst of it round the Horniman. A heavy extraction machine coming off a van parked twenty metres downhill from your front door is a two person lift, so we bring two people up here where one would do on the flat. Carpet is priced by the room, so the second pair of hands is simply part of the job. Tell us the gradient and the door-to-kerb distance at the booking.
Flats in converted villas
A lot of the villas were split decades ago and the conversions vary wildly. Shared front doors, a communal stairwell nobody quite owns, and a top flat three floors up with no lift are all normal. We carry the kit up. Tell us the floor when you book so the slot is long enough for the carrying as well as the cleaning.
Bigger kitchens, bigger cookers
Range cookers turn up far more often up here than they do in a flat conversion. A 90cm range is £143 on the oven list, the same as a two oven AGA, and an AGA has to be stone cold, so it goes off the night before and the booking is made a day ahead. Anything wider than 90cm, or a twin cavity range with a griddle in the middle, gets looked at before a figure is given. A hob strip is £23 and an extractor £28 alongside whichever of those you have.
Sizing a deep clean for a villa
The smallest team deep clean is two cleaners for three hours at £186, which is plenty in a two bedroom flat. A six room house with two bathrooms and a basement kitchen is usually three cleaners for four hours at £342, or six hours at £498 where the place has been let go badly. We work that out from the room count on the phone, and if the figure sounds high we will say what we would leave out to bring it down rather than sell you hours you do not need.
What else gets booked
Carpets lead, stairs more often than rooms, at the same prices as SE6. After that move-out cleans on the flats, which turn over faster than the whole houses, and those land at the £425 four bedroom figure more often here than anywhere else on the round. Long curtains come off the tall first floor windows in these houses and go at £42 a drop, cleaned hanging so nothing rides up above the sill; short drops are £35. It is a short run over from Catford by road, though the hill and the school traffic make a morning slower than the distance suggests. East and downhill takes you back towards Rushey Green and the town centre. All the figures are on the prices page, and 020 3129 2846 is answered 8am to 7pm every day.
Questions we get asked
How much are stairs?
£41 a flight, plus £9 for each landing. A three storey house with a loft conversion usually has three flights, so that is £123 for the flights and £27 for their landings, £150 before any rooms are counted. Give us the flight count rather than the bedroom count when you ring.
Is SE23 on the same price list?
Yes. Forest Hill is on the same list as Catford. A living room carpet is £43 here as it is everywhere else on the round.
Can you clean a range cooker or an AGA?
A 90cm range and a two oven AGA are both £143. An AGA has to be stone cold, so switch it off the night before and the booking goes in a day ahead. Anything wider than 90cm gets looked at before we put a number on it.
Our flat is on the third floor with no lift. Is that a problem?
No, but tell us when you book. Carrying an extraction machine up three flights adds twenty minutes and we build that into the slot.
Prefer the phone? 020 3129 2846, 8am to 7pm.