We clean homes all over Andover

Andover's older houses hold on to dust

Andover has a lot of old houses, and they clean differently from new ones. Around the town center and on the hill by Phillips Academy there are antique colonials with plaster walls and wide pine floorboards. Shawsheen Village was built as a company village for the woolen mill, and many of its houses are brick. Ballardvale grew up around a mill on the Shawsheen River. Houses like these have more ledges and corners than a newer build.

Old plaster sheds a fine white dust as the house shifts through the seasons. It settles on door frames and the tops of radiators, and it keeps coming back. Wide boards have gaps between them that trap grit. Windows with divided panes take real time to wipe, so they are the first thing a rushed cleaner skips. Leave those spots alone for a few months and the house looks dull even on the day it was vacuumed.

So in an older Andover house we slow down on the parts a quick clean misses. Door frames and window trim get wiped by hand. Radiator tops and baseboards get dusted, and the floors get vacuumed along the seams before anything damp touches them. Mini blinds and wall hangings get dusted too. A first visit to a house like this takes longer than the ones after it. Dust that has sat in trim for years does not come off in one pass.

• Window trim and sashes wiped by hand
• Radiator tops and baseboards dusted
• Wood floors vacuumed along the seams
• Ceiling fans and mini blinds dusted
• Door frames and wall hangings wiped down

Road salt and pollen get tracked indoors

Andover is an inland town, so there is no ocean spray to fight here. Winter brings salt anyway. Salt from the roads and sand from the driveway both ride into the house on boots. Once the salt dries it leaves a white film on hardwood and tile. The sand is worse. It grinds into a floor finish like sandpaper every time somebody walks across it, and a scratched finish does not come back with a mop.

Spring brings a different mess. Andover has heavy tree cover. When the oaks and pines drop their pollen, a yellow film lands on window sills and patio doors all over town. It blows in through open windows and rides in on clothes. Summer humidity then makes basements and laundry rooms smell stale. By fall there are wet leaves on the doormat again, and the floors near the door start collecting grit.

We plan the work around those seasons. In winter the entry and kitchen floors get most of the attention, since that is where the salt and sand end up. In spring we clean windows inside and out and wipe the patio door tracks once the pollen has come down. Seasonal services are on our Google listing, and a recurring visit keeps the grit from building up in between them.

Renovations and moves need a bigger clean

Old houses get renovated, and a new kitchen or bathroom leaves dust in places a broom never reaches. It settles on top of door frames and inside closets on the far side of the house, well away from the work. Post construction clean up is one of our services. Here is what one customer wrote after that kind of job. "Called for a one-time clean after renovations and they handled all the dust and leftover mess without complaining."

Moving is the other time a house needs more than a standard visit. Move-in and move-out cleaning happens while the rooms are empty. That means we can reach the floors wall to wall and clean inside the oven and microwave. Leftover trash gets hauled out as well. A seller hands over a clean house. A buyer unpacks into rooms that somebody has already scrubbed, which makes moving day a lot easier.

Regular visits are the simplest way to keep a house from sliding back between bigger cleans. A standard visit can cover making beds, changing linens, folding laundry and emptying trash, on top of the dusting and the floors. One customer who works from home said: "I work from home and having them come every other week keeps the place manageable." We set the schedule with you.

Getting a price in Andover

Call us at (617) 803-6705 or request an online estimate on our website. Tell us about the house and what you want done: a regular visit, a deep clean, a move or a renovation cleanup. Old plaster and wood floors are worth mentioning, since they change how long the job takes. We give you the price in writing before any work is booked. We are open all day on weekdays and for set hours on Saturday and Sunday.