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Notes on looking after a London house
Practical writing on the materials, buildings and seasons we work with. No news, no offers.
The difference between a stain and an etch, and why it matters
Two things go wrong with marble. One can be reversed with patience; the other cannot be cleaned at all. Telling them apart takes about ten seconds.
Why limescale comes back so fast in London
London tap water carries between roughly 250 and 350 milligrams of calcium carbonate per litre. That number explains most of what goes wrong in a London bathroom.
Clothes moths: what actually works, and what is just scent
Moths are a storage problem, not a cleanliness problem. The jumper you put away unwashed in March is the one with holes in October.
Looking after period sash windows
Sash windows need more attention than modern glazing and a lighter hand. The damage that matters is rarely to the glass.
What happens to a house that stands empty
An unoccupied house does not simply stay as you left it. Several things go wrong slowly, and all of them are cheaper to prevent than to correct.
Why one clean after the builders is never enough
Construction dust does not settle once. It keeps falling for days, which is why a single clean at the end of a project looks finished for about forty-eight hours.
What a pre-let clean should actually include
Cleaning is the leading cause of deposit disputes in the UK. The items that decide them are almost never the ones people spend their time on.
Eight questions worth asking before you hire a housekeeper
Most of what separates a good arrangement from a bad one is decided before anyone has cleaned anything. These are the questions that find it out.