Guides

After builders cleaning, done properly

The trades have gone and the house looks finished, until the light catches the floor. This guide explains what construction dust actually does, the order a proper builders clean has to follow, why it costs more than a deep clean of the same rooms, and what to check before any cleaning crew drives away.

The Problem

Dust that comes back twice

Plaster, cement and MDF dust is not household dust. The particles are far finer, so they hang in the air for hours after the work stops and keep settling for days. Wipe a windowsill on Friday and by Monday it wears a fresh grey film. Nobody missed it. The room itself was still shedding.

It travels, too. Every footstep and every opened door lifts it again, and it drifts into places ordinary cleaning never reaches: window tracks and hinge recesses, the faces of sockets and switches, extractor grilles and appliance filters, the tops of door frames and kitchen units, the fins of radiators. Sanding dust is abrasive as well. Rub it across glass, chrome or a lacquered floor with a damp cloth and you are polishing the surface with fine sandpaper.

That is why the first pass of a builders clean is always dry: hoovering with fine filtration, brushing down, tack cloths. Water comes later. Mop a dusty floor first and the dust does not leave. It turns into a thin grey slurry that dries into the grain of the boards and the lines of the grout.

The Method

In this order, or twice

Every step below exists to stop dust landing on something already cleaned. Skip one and the price is paid in repeated work, whoever is doing it.

Clear the debris first

Offcuts, packaging, tape, protective film and sheeting go out before any cleaning starts. Cleaning around debris only moves dust from one pile to another, and every bag carried through a finished room afterwards undoes work.

Dry before wet

The whole property is hoovered and dusted before water touches anything. Dust lifted dry leaves the room. Dust wiped wet smears, and on a new floor it dries into a grey film that takes a second full wash to shift.

Top down, always

Light fittings, curtain poles, tops of doors and frames, and vents come first, then walls and joinery, then worktop height, then the floor. Dust falls. Work with gravity or clean everything twice.

Detail the fittings

Sockets, switch plates, hinges, handles, window tracks and extractor covers are done by hand. This is slow, unglamorous work, and it is exactly where a builders clean earns its price.

Lift the marks

Paint spots, plaster splashes, adhesive, silicone smears, sticker residue and grout haze come off glass, tiles, sanitary ware and worktops with the right scraper or solvent for each surface. One product for everything scratches something.

Floors, last of all

Hoovered thoroughly, the edge against the skirting done by hand, then washed. A floor cleaned any earlier is re-dirtied by every step that follows it.

Even in this order, expect some settle-out: fine dust that was airborne during the clean lands over the next day or so, and a finished job allows for a final wipe of the horizontal surfaces once the air has cleared. The full room by room scope we quote for is on the after builders cleaning service page.

The Price

Same rooms, more work

A deep clean and a builders clean cover the same property, and the builders clean is priced higher. The difference is what is being removed.

A deep clean deals with living: grease, limescale, the slow everyday build up. A builders clean deals with construction residue, and residue fights back. The dust needs two or three passes instead of one because it keeps resettling. Paint, adhesive and silicone have to be lifted spot by spot without scratching what is underneath. Tracks, filters and fittings all need hand work. The rooms are the same. The hours are not.

By the hour the same gap holds: deep cleaning runs from €25/h and after builders work runs from €30/h. If what you are actually weighing is a deep clean against a regular clean, that comparison has its own guide.

Property Deep Builders

1 Bedroom €220 €300

2 Bedrooms €320 €450

3 Bedrooms €450 €650

4 Bedrooms €600 €850

All prices are exclusive of VAT. Your final price is confirmed before we book you in. The full tables, including add-ons, are on the price list.

Before They Leave

Walk it before they drive away

Whoever does the clean, inspect the property while the crew is still on site. A few minutes with daylight and a bright torch will settle more than any conversation afterwards, because anything found now gets fixed on the spot. Check these eight places, in any order.

Window tracks and hinges

Run a finger along each track. It should come up clean, not grey. Open every window and look into the hinge recess, because fine dust packs in there and blows back out on the first windy day.

Glass, at an angle

Stand where the light rakes across the pane rather than looking straight on. Paint spots, plaster flecks and silicone smears hide from a head-on view and show instantly in raking light.

The high edges

Tops of door frames, picture rails, the top of the kitchen units. Dust survives up there because nobody looks up. A clean fingertip along one door frame tells you how thorough the whole job was.

Sockets and switches

The plate should be clean and dry with no grey line packed around its edge. Plates are cleaned with a barely damp cloth, never a wet one, so streaks here also tell you the crew was careless.

Inside the units

Open the kitchen cupboards and the wardrobes. Dust drifts in through every gap for the whole length of the works, and shelves are quick to check and slow to argue about later.

Extractor grilles and filters

Bathroom fans and cooker hoods pull airborne dust into themselves for the entire build. A grey furred grille means the airways were skipped, and it will shed back into the room.

Grout, silicone and tiles

Haze on tiling shows as a dull bloom that no amount of dry buffing fixes. Grout lines should be one colour end to end, and silicone beads should be smooth, not smeared with trapped dust.

Floor edges and thresholds

The middle of a floor is the easy part. Check the line against the skirting, the corners, and the strip under each door, because that is where builders dust makes its last stand.

Pricing The Job

When a quote needs a walkthrough

A builders clean can usually be priced from a description: the size of the property, what the works were, and whether the trades are finished. Sometimes it cannot, and it is worth knowing when. If the site is not actually finished, if a snag list is still open, if rooms are still storing materials, or if the works were out of the ordinary, heavy sanding of old floorboards, a full replaster, a build that followed fire or water damage, then a figure quoted blind is a guess dressed up as a price.

In those cases the honest route is a short walkthrough first. Whoever cleans can see the residue for themselves, agree the scope with you, and give a figure that will not move on the day. Be wary of anyone happy to name a firm price for an unfinished site they have never seen.

We do this work ourselves, Mon to Sun, 8:00 to 20:00, fully insured and with eco-friendly products. We cover County Dublin and travel across Kildare, Wicklow, Louth, Westmeath, Offaly, Carlow and Meath. If your own handover is coming up, tell us the size of the property and what the works involved, and ask us for a price.