We clean homes across Hampton

How we clean Hampton's older houses

Hampton is one of the oldest cities in the country, but most of its houses are much younger. Whole neighborhoods of brick ranches and Cape Cods went up after the Second World War. Families came for work at Langley and at the shipyard in Newport News. Phoebus and Wythe are older, and a lot of the houses there still have wood floors and plaster walls. Each kind of house holds dirt in its own places, so we clean each one a little differently.

A brick ranch from that era often has oak floors, sometimes still hiding under carpet, and a kitchen that has been redone at least once. Grease collects on top of the upper cabinets and on the wall behind the stove, where nobody sees it until the light catches it. Ceiling fans run most of the year here. Their blades pick up a gray layer of dust that drops onto the bed or the table the next time someone turns the fan on. On a deep clean we wipe the cabinet tops and every fan blade.

The older houses in Phoebus and Wythe need a lighter touch. Plaster walls pick up scuffs along the stairs and fingerprints around light switches. A soft cloth and very little water take those off without marking the wall. Old wood floors get vacuumed first, so grit does not scratch the finish under the mop. The mop goes on damp, never wet, because standing water works into the seams between boards. Deep window sills and the tops of door frames hold more dust than most people expect.

• Ceiling fan blades wiped before the floors
• Grease cleaned off cabinet tops and fronts
• Wood floors vacuumed first, then damp mopped
• Scuffs washed off walls and light switches
• Oven and microwave cleaned inside

Humid summers leave mildew in Hampton bathrooms

Hampton is low, flat ground with water close on almost every side, from the Back River down to Hampton Roads. The air stays damp for much of the year, and in July and August it hardly dries out at all. That moisture settles wherever a room gets little air. In a bathroom it goes to the grout along the tub and the caulk in the shower corners. In a bedroom it goes to the back wall of the closet.

Left alone, that damp turns into gray and black spots on the grout and a musty smell in the linen closet. Regular cleaning keeps it small. When we clean a bathroom we scrub the grout lines and the caulk, and wipe down the ceiling where the shower steam hits. If the spots have already soaked deep into old silicone caulk, cleaning will lighten them but may not take them out. We would rather tell you that before we start than after.

Spring brings a different mess. For a few weeks pine and oak pollen coats Hampton in yellow dust. It blows in through the screens and settles in window tracks and on sills. Closer to the bay, in Buckroe and Fox Hill, salt in the air leaves a hazy film on the glass. We clean interior and exterior windows. In spring we vacuum the tracks and sills out first, so the pollen does not turn into yellow paste when it gets wiped.

Military moves mean frequent Hampton move-outs

Langley brings a steady stream of Air Force families through Hampton, and plenty of them rent off base. When a family gets orders to a new base, the move can come fast. Often the family leaves town the same week the truck is loaded. That gives a landlord a house to inspect before the next tenant arrives, with nobody left to clean it. We do both move-out cleaning and cleaning between tenants.

A move-out clean is about the insides of things. We wipe out every kitchen cabinet and drawer, then clean the oven and microwave inside. Walls get washed where furniture rubbed and where hands touched along the hallway. The laundry room gets cleaned, and so do the trash bins, so the next tenant does not open one to a smell. If furniture is still in the house, we move it to clean behind and under it.

Our Google reviews mention photos more than once. One customer wrote: "After cleaning each room they take a photo and send them all to you." A family may be driving to a new base. A landlord may be checking a rental from across town. Those pictures show how the house was left. Landlords and agents hire us too. One real estate professional wrote: "We use Maid it on all of our multifamily and residential cleans."

Getting a price in Hampton

Call (757) 831-0333, or request an online estimate from this page. Tell us the address and what kind of clean you need, since a move-out and a regular visit are priced differently. If the house has not had a deep clean in a while, say so, because the first visit takes longer than the ones after it. You get the price in writing before anything is booked. Our hours are 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday to Sunday.