Private Housekeeping in Chelsea

Where we work in Chelsea

Our Chelsea round runs the length of the King's Road, from Sloane Square to its western end, and south to the river. We work Cheyne Walk and the Chelsea Embankment houses, the studio houses on Tite Street, and the garden squares at Carlyle, Markham and Wellington.

Royal Hospital Road, Flood Street and Old Church Street are regular ground. Further west, The Boltons and Tregunter Road sit in SW10, as does Chelsea Harbour, where the apartment buildings and the marina have their own access arrangements entirely.

What we are cleaning

Chelsea's stock is older and more varied than its neighbours', and a larger share of it is listed.

The riverside houses on Cheyne Walk are the most sensitive properties we handle anywhere, early Georgian in parts, heavily protected, with original glass, panelling and floors that cannot be treated as replaceable. Nothing abrasive, nothing wet left standing, no steam near unsealed timber.

The studio houses are a Chelsea peculiarity: purpose-built for artists in the 1880s and 90s, with double-height north-lit studios that are magnificent and very nearly impossible to clean from the ground. High-level glazing here is a planned job on its own schedule, never something folded into a weekly visit.

Then the two newer strands: the stuccoed terraces off the King's Road, a large share of them extended downward at some point in the last two decades, and the 1980s Chelsea Harbour apartments, which are conventional to clean but tightly managed, with access through a single estate entrance and a concierge who logs every arrival.

Access, parking and keys

Chelsea came out of the Congestion Charge zone when the Western Extension was removed in December 2010, and has stayed out. It remains inside the ULEZ, as all of Greater London does.

Parking is simpler here than across the border in Westminster: the Royal Borough does not divide itself into zones, so a permit is valid across the whole borough. What complicates Chelsea instead is building work. On a street with an active project there may already be a skip, a hoarding and a contractor's bay in place, and the practical answer is to coordinate with the site rather than against it, which we do directly, ahead of a handover clean.

For occupied houses we hold keys under our standard protocol: numbered safe, no address labels, signed in and out against a named housekeeper.

Services in Chelsea

• After-builders cleaning. Three stages, worked to your contractor's programme. One clean at the end always fails.
• Private housekeeping. Retained, weekly through daily, with a named housekeeper and a named deputy.
• Deep cleaning. Seasonal, and before a house is returned to. Descaling is most of the work in London.
• Marble and stone care. Cleaning, sealing, stain drawing and honing out etch damage. Etching is not staining.
• Move-in and move-out. Worked against the check-in report, because that is the document a dispute is decided on.