We clean homes all over Stoneham

What Stoneham houses need from a cleaner

Stoneham has a real mix of houses, and each kind cleans a little differently. Around the common and off Main Street you find older colonials and Victorians with lots of painted wood trim and tall windows. Farther out, many streets are lined with mid-century capes and ranches on wooded lots. Then there are the condo buildings and apartment complexes spread around town. We clean all of them, and we plan each visit around the house in front of us.

An old house near the center collects dust in more places than a new one. The door frames and window trim have ledges on them, and many rooms still have radiators under the windows. Old hardwood floors have small gaps between the boards, and a quick sweep leaves the grit sitting in them. So we vacuum the floors instead of just sweeping, and we dust the trim and door frames by hand. Skip those spots for a few months and the dust starts to stick to the paint.

Capes put the bedrooms upstairs under sloped ceilings, and the ceiling fans up there get forgotten for months. Ranches and split-levels often have a finished basement or a laundry room downstairs that nobody likes to clean. Condos are smaller, but the kitchen and bathroom still get used hard every day. Our cleaning is customizable, so a visit can include the ceiling fans and the laundry room, or skip them when they don't need it. You tell us what matters in your house.

• Door frames and window trim dusted by hand
• Hardwood floors vacuumed to pull grit from the gaps
• Ceiling fans dusted in upstairs bedrooms
• Beds made and linens changed when you ask
• Oven and microwave cleaned inside on request

Stoneham winters bring salt and sand inside

Winter in Stoneham means snow, and after a storm the plows and sand trucks work Main Street and the side streets. Whatever they spread comes home on your boots. Salt dries into a white film on hardwood and tile. Sand is worse, because it grinds like sandpaper every time someone steps on it. The floor just inside the front door takes most of that wear, and you can see the finish go dull there first.

So in winter we put more time into the entry. We vacuum the rugs and carpet near the door so the sand comes up instead of working deeper into the pile. Then we clean the hard floor underneath and take the salt film off before it sets. Houses with a patio door onto a deck get the same treatment at the back, since that door sees boots too. Leave that grit down all winter and the floor near the door looks older than the rest of the room by spring.

Spring brings a different mess. The Middlesex Fells covers the south end of town, and plenty of Stoneham streets have tall oaks and pines in the yards. When the pollen drops, a yellow dust coats window sills and the glass on the patio door. After a winter with the house shut tight, there's also a layer of dust on the ceiling fans and blinds that nobody noticed. That's when a seasonal deep clean pays off, along with our interior and exterior window cleaning.

Stoneham renovations and moves take extra work

Older Stoneham houses get new kitchens and bathrooms sooner or later, and people move in and out of the condos and rentals around town. Both leave a place needing more than a regular cleaning. Drywall dust from a renovation floats into rooms nobody worked in. It settles on the tops of door frames and wall hangings, and it packs into mini blinds. If you only wipe what you can see, it keeps coming down for weeks.

We do post construction clean up for this kind of job. One customer wrote on Google: "Called for a one-time clean after renovations and they handled all the dust and leftover mess without complaining. Communication was easy and the price was fair." Most of that work is doing things in the right order. Ceiling fans and the tops of door frames come first and the floors get vacuumed last, so nothing we clean gets dusted over again.

Move-in and move-out cleaning is a different job. The rooms are empty, so every mark and every bit of grease shows. We clean the appliances, including the inside of the oven and the microwave, and we do the laundry room that usually gets skipped. For a house that sat empty, such as a foreclosure, we also handle trash out, so whatever the last owner left behind goes with us. That leaves the place ready for the next person to carry boxes in.

Getting a price in Stoneham

Call (617) 803-6705 or ask for an online estimate, and tell us about your Stoneham house. Say how often you want us there. If you just finished a renovation or you're moving out, mention that too, because that work takes longer than a regular visit. You get a free quote either way, so you know the price before we start. We're open around the clock Monday through Friday. On weekends we're open Saturday from nine to five and Sunday from nine to two.