How long would it take you to clean this house?

[head2toeinuniqlo]

Hi everyone, hoping to draw upon the expertise of Mumsnetters who are good at cleaning. The house belonged to a hoarder. It is empty now but is filthy.

how many rooms?
Carpets and ovens to be cleaned ?
at least two - three full days or more if there’s only one person doing it

Sorry, I hit post too soon!

4 bedrooms
2 reception rooms
4 bathrooms
1 flight of stairs
1 laundry
No cooker
No carpets.

One person.

Probably the best part of a working day-so 6-7 hours if I was doing all the skirtings and wiping all the walls down, windows etc. no carpets or furniture make it easier

It depends how ground in the dirt is. We bought a 4 bedroom house from a 90 year old who just hadn’t been mobile enough to do it for the last few years of her life. It wasn’t overly cluttered. Some of the dirt on the walls wouldn’t be cleaned and the carpet stains wouldn’t come out in a couple of rooms. So we redecorated and bought new carpets. I even bought a new fridge because I just couldn’t get it clean enough.

Depends on the extent of the hoarding and what was hoarded.There is no way this would take less that two weeks to give deep clean but it’s likely you will find damage due to hoarding damp mould etc
bathroom may be a challenge are floor boards okay near toilet ?

what about the loft space and garden ?
was there ever a pet ?

The house is fine, just dirty. The hoard has been removed. The gardeners will sort the garden out and the outside of the house will be cleaned by house cleaners. So it's just the inside of the house.

Is it empty as in totally bare rooms? No regular furniture (chairs/sofa/table/beds/wardrobes) in there at all?

@head2toeinuniqlo definitely needs more than a day if cleaning it properly. ceilings washed, not just wiped down. walls washed, not just wiped down, all skirting, all doors, door jambs, cupboards, built in wardrobes, etc etc. i have two ensuites and a bathroom. they can take me the best part of 6 hours if washing walls. shower cubicles also have loads of glass to clean and dry and shower drains all need removed and scrubbed with an old tooth brush! I would say close to at least 8 days work for the house. house cleaners tend to skip over things which do not look dirty ie walls. you also have windows and window frames to wash/

Yes, it's completely empty.

At least a week, full on.

At least a fortnight on my own. And only if it was empty of everything.

I'd be cleaning every square inch, and I too would be wanting the bathroom floorboards checked.

Sounds like a weekends worth of cleaning to me

As a start, I would get a cleaning team in and call it an end-of-tenancy clean. They will blitz it to a standard where you can take a look at what lies beneath the surface grime.

It will be money well spent.

If tackling it yourself, it will take a lot longer than you think. A week, maybe two, because the hard graft means you'll be knackered after a few hours.

I should have added that I would pay someone to do it too. We paid for my late MILs house to be cleaned after she died and the result was amazing.

I think you’re looking at 3-4 hours per room to do a proper deep and detailed clean, maybe more if really grotty and greasy. So 11 rooms plus halls etc then sensibly it’s a week. Things like sealant might have to be stripped out if it’s mouldy. If it’s goes more quickly then there’s time in hand for some repairs or decorating.

Really?
an absolutely filthy 4 bed house??
a weekend??

I guess we all have different standards of cleaning …..mine and yours are poles apart

I'd say 3-4 hours per room too. The bedrooms / reception will be easier than bathrooms, but you'll still be scrubbing window frames, doors, skirting boards and using sugar soap to properly clean ceilings and walls.

And you'll be exhausted - it's back-breaking if you're not used to a physical job.

There's a young woman on social media, Clean with Bex, who started posting last year about deep cleaning her mouldy rented flat. Now she deep cleans all sorts of properties, but in awful states, so take a look at her content, not least for equipment she uses.

Very hard to know without seeing ,for instance how dirty is paintwork and walls ?
But ..@head2toeinuniqlo I'd love some detail on how the house was emptied .

My house was minging when we moved in and it took me an afternoon just to clean the hallway, so going on that I’d say a week.

I'd also think at least a week. More so if it's got high ceilings and the woodwork has lots of nooks and crannies.

I would pay a professional unless you absolutely cannot afford to do so.