After builders cleaning in Clerkenwell, EC1V

Exposed brick sheds grit after the builders leave, and it collects along the mortar joints and in every window reveal. The crew vacuums the brick face and wipes the sills below it, then does the floor last, because more falls while the rest of the flat is cleaned. Concrete and timber ceilings are dusted as far as ladders of about 2 m reach safely. Sealed or polished concrete floors are vacuumed and mopped, and cement splashes are tried with a product that suits the finish; the crew tells you on the day what will not lift. Steel and aluminium frames hold dust in their tracks and drainage slots, which are vacuumed and wiped, and new glazing loses its labels.

A 2-bed flat after a standard refurbishment is usually 2 cleaners for 4 hours, £272 all in; a full renovation with plaster and paint on the floors is 2 cleaners for 5 hours at £332. That is £30 per cleaner-hour plus £32 for equipment and detergents. Grout haze across a whole tiled floor is the hard floor deep clean, an extra at £6 a square metre; see tile and grout cleaning. Other sizes are on our prices.

Seventeen conservation areas fall within 800 m of the middle of Clerkenwell ward, from Clerkenwell Green, Charterhouse Square, Hatton Garden and Rosebery Avenue to Barbican and Golden Lane. The same radius holds 355 listed buildings, with St John's Gate and the Priory Church of St John of Jerusalem at Grade I. In a listed building the crew dusts and wipes old joinery and stone by hand, and walls are not washed.

The council's brownfield register lists sites for new homes nearby, among them the Mount Pleasant sorting office land, where Taylor Wimpey's Postmark scheme has permission for 681 homes, 336 of them on the Calthorpe Street side in EC1. A handover clean in flats like these is lighter work. Angel is just to the north, Barbican (EC2Y) to the south-east and builders cleans in Bloomsbury to the west, and the borough page is Islington.