We clean from the ceiling down

We vacuum the dust before we wipe

A renovation leaves a layer of fine dust on every surface in the house, even in rooms the crew never touched. Drywall sanding makes most of it. That dust is finer than flour, and it settles on top of door frames and inside drawers that stayed shut the whole time. We start at the ceiling and the light fixtures and work down the walls, because anything we knock loose falls onto what is below. The floors come last on every job.

The dust has to come off dry before anything gets wet. Sanding dust from drywall is a fine mineral powder, and a damp cloth turns it into a thin paste. That paste smears across a countertop and dries as a white haze. On a painted wall it leaves streaks you only notice when the sun comes in low. So every surface gets vacuumed first and wiped after, with the cloths rinsed or swapped often. Skip the vacuum and the wiping takes far longer, because you are pushing that paste around.

The places people miss are the ones you cannot see from the doorway. We open every cabinet and drawer and clean the inside, because dust drifts in through the gaps even when the doors stay closed. Window tracks and sills get vacuumed out. Vent covers and baseboard tops get wiped. So do switch plates and outlet covers. Then we vacuum and mop the hard floors. We start each room in the far corner and finish at the door.

• Ceilings and light fixtures dusted first
• Every surface vacuumed dry before it is wiped
• Cabinets and drawers cleaned inside and out
• Window tracks and sills vacuumed out
• Hard floors vacuumed and mopped last

Older homes around Canton trap more dust

Much of the housing around Canton is wood frame. The older streets have colonials and Cape Cod houses, and the neighborhoods built after World War Two filled up with ranches and split levels. Plenty of those houses are now getting new kitchens and baths, and some are having their old plaster walls torn out. Plaster comes down as a heavy, gritty dust with chunks mixed in. It behaves differently from drywall dust, and it needs more vacuum work before any cloth touches a surface.

Older houses carry more trim than new ones do. Wide baseboards and the trim around old windows have flat ledges on top, and every ledge holds a line of dust after sanding. Paneled doors have grooves that need a brush. Double hung windows often have storm windows outside them, so there are two sets of tracks to vacuum, and both fill up. We clean every one of those by hand, because a quick pass with a duster only moves the dust down a level.

Heat is the part people forget. Lots of homes around here have hot water baseboard heat, and the metal fins behind those covers catch drywall dust. If the dust stays there, the first cold night in the fall heats it up, and the house smells like something is burning. We lift off the covers that come off easily and vacuum the fins behind them. Homes with forced hot air have a different problem: the ducts pull dust in during the work and blow it back out afterward. We clean the vent covers. Ask your contractor to swap the furnace filter once the sanding is done.

The weather here adds to the mess

Indoor renovation work goes on all winter around here, with the windows shut and the heat running. The dust has nowhere to go, so it hangs in the air and settles slowly. That is why the final clean works best after the sanding has stopped and the air has had time to clear. Clean too soon and a fresh layer lands on surfaces that were just wiped, and the room looks dull again by morning.

Winter also brings road salt and sand in on work boots. Contractors walk in and out all day, and the salt dries on the floor as a white film. The sand is worse, because grit ground into a new hardwood floor leaves fine scratches in the finish. Salt film needs its own wipe with clean water, or it comes back as a haze once the floor dries. So we vacuum up the grit before a mop touches the floor, and the front entry gets a second rinse.

Summer brings a different problem. Humid air makes fine dust tacky, so it clings to walls and cabinet fronts instead of wiping off clean. Basements are the hardest room for this. Many homes around Canton have finished basements, and a basement remodel leaves dust in a room that already runs damp. If you have a dehumidifier, run it before we arrive. Damp dust smears, so we vacuum longer down there and switch to fresh cloths more often.

You can check the finished work yourself

A post construction clean is easy to check, and we would rather you check it. Run a finger along the top of a door frame. Open a kitchen drawer and look at the corners. Stand at the end of a counter with the light behind it and look along the surface for a white haze. If the dust was only moved around rather than removed, one of those spots will show it.

Other misses take a few days to show up. If the cabinet shelves were skipped, the dishes you put away come back out with a film of dust on them. If the window tracks were skipped, the first warm day you open the windows, the breeze carries that grit back inside. Both come from a rushed job. Working top to bottom and inside out takes more time up front, and nothing has to be cleaned twice.

A finished room should look like nobody worked in it. Counters feel smooth under a bare hand, and mirrors show no streaks when light hits them from the side. There is no grit underfoot, even in the corners of the stairs and along the edges of each room. The air smells clean instead of chalky, because the dust is gone rather than stirred up. If you find something we missed, tell us. Every job comes with our satisfaction guarantee.

We walk the space before we quote

No two renovations leave the same mess. That is why we give free on-site estimates with no obligation. We walk the space with you and check how far the dust has traveled, which is usually farther than people expect. We also look at the floors and new finishes, because fresh hardwood and new stone counters each need their own care. You know what the job costs before any cleaning starts.

Timing matters on a job like this. We can work evenings and weekends, so the clean can happen after the last contractor leaves and before you move furniture back in. Our cleaners are background checked and trained, and Top Cleaning Services is licensed and bonded. We are insured as well. We use eco-friendly, non-toxic cleaning products. That matters when kids or pets will be on floors that were a work site until recently.

Some jobs need more than dust removal. Drywall dust works deep into carpet and into any couch that stayed in the house during the work, and we clean carpets and upholstery too. Glass tends to come out of a remodel with paint specks and stickers on it. Window cleaning inside and out can be added to the same job. Stores and offices get the same top to bottom process after construction work. If you want surfaces disinfected before you move back in, we offer sanitization as well.