A house comes out of construction looking finished. The trades are gone, the floors are down, the fixtures are in. Then somebody cleans it, everybody moves in, and a week later there is a fine grey film back on every horizontal surface — and then again the week after that. This is the single most common complaint about new builds and big remodels, and it is almost always the same thing: the dust was moved rather than removed.
Construction dust is not ordinary household dust. It is drywall, sawdust, concrete and joint compound ground down to a powder that is far finer and far lighter than anything a house normally produces. It does not settle and stay settled. It goes airborne again from the smallest disturbance, and it gets into places ordinary dust never reaches: window and door tracks, hinge knuckles, the runners inside cabinet drawers, electrical boxes, light fittings, the tops of door frames, and — the one that matters most — the HVAC system.
That last one is why it keeps coming back. If drywall dust is sitting in the returns, the vents and the ductwork, then every time the system runs it redistributes a fresh coat of it over a house somebody has just finished cleaning. You can wipe every surface in the building perfectly and be back where you started the following week, because the reservoir was never in the surfaces.
The order the work is done in is the other half of it. Dust falls. Clean the floors first and then wipe the ceiling fans, the tops of the cabinets and the door frames, and everything you just knocked loose lands on a floor that has already been done. Vacuum a surface before the vents are cleared and the vents put it straight back. The job has to run from the top of the building down, and from the back of each room forward, so that everything ends up on a surface that has not been cleaned yet — and the floors go last.
There is a second category of work that has nothing to do with dust, and it is where new finishes get ruined. Paint spots, adhesive residue, silicone smears, tape marks and manufacturer stickers on windows, appliances, tubs and fixtures. All of it comes off, but new glass scratches, new stone is often unsealed, and new floor finishes have not fully cured. A scraper used at the wrong angle on a new window leaves a mark that is there for the life of the glass, and an aggressive product on unsealed stone leaves a dull patch that will not polish out. More new surfaces are damaged by the first clean than by the entire construction process.
The honest expectation to set is that a site that has just finished usually needs more than one pass. A building keeps settling for a while after the trades leave, and dust that was hanging in the air on the day of the final clean is on the counters two days later. Where that is likely, a second pass a week or so later is worth planning for rather than being surprised by — and it is a great deal cheaper than a full second clean, because the reservoirs are already gone.
If you are taking handover on a new build or coming to the end of a remodel, the questions worth asking whoever is cleaning it are simple: what order are you working in, and are you clearing the vents. If the answer to the second one is no, budget for doing this again in a month.
Cami's Cleaning LLC does post-construction and post-remodel clean-up within 20 miles of East Tulsa. Free written quotes — call (918) 859-8250.