The builders wouldn’t start until this bathroom was cleaned

She rang the builders first. They came, looked at the bathroom and said no. Not until it’s cleaned. So she rang me.

I’m Rena. I’ve cleaned houses in Leicester since 2011, and this was a job in LE4 in October. Same face every time, not an agency.

Why the builders said no

Builders are there to fix things, not to clean. They need to get to the pipes, the floor and the walls, and they kneel and stand in that room for days. You can’t really blame them for not wanting to start in a bathroom like this one.

The floor was covered in dirt and rubbish. The sink had rust round the plughole and grime all over the bowl. The cupboard was packed with old mops, bags and things nobody had touched in a long time.

What I did in the bathroom

First I cleared everything out, cupboard included. You can’t clean round clutter, and the builders needed the space empty.

Then the toilet, the sink and the floor, top to bottom. I do bathrooms in stages: limescale remover first, left to work and then scrubbed, then a full clean and rinse, and mould treatment last. I never use all three at once. Mixing products gives off fumes, and that’s bad for me and for whoever lives there.

I bring my own cloths, washed at 90 degrees, and each room gets its own. A bathroom cloth never goes near a kitchen.

That bathroom alone took me 3 hours.

The rest of the house

That bathroom wasn’t the only room that needed it. There was a second bathroom, the kitchen worktops were buried under boxes, clothes and old food, and the corridor, the sitting room and the other rooms were full of things that had to go.

I work room by room and finish one before I start the next. Everything that had to go was collected the next day.

I don’t judge

Homes get like this for all sorts of reasons, and none of them are my business. My job is to get the place ready for what comes next, whether that’s builders, a new tenant or someone moving back in.

What a job like this costs

Heavy cleans like this start from £300 for a small flat. This one was a whole house: four rooms, two bathrooms, the kitchen, the sitting room and the corridor. It came to £1,200.

I can’t price one of these without seeing it. Send me photos or a short video of every room and I’ll tell you the price before anything is booked.

If it’s an empty property between tenants, my end of tenancy cleaning page has prices by size. If it’s a lived-in home that’s got on top of you, have a look at deep cleaning in Leicester.