Post-Construction Cleaning in Tuscumbia, AL

Tuscumbia's historic district covers roughly three hundred acres and more than six hundred properties on a street grid drawn in 1817 — antebellum houses near the core, Victorians a few blocks out, early-1900s cottages along the older streets. People buy these houses to keep them, and keeping them means renovating: a bathroom added where a closet was, a kitchen moved to where the family actually lives, a porch rebuilt, wiring that finally makes an inspector nod. Every one of those projects makes dust, and the dust in a 150-year-old house isn't the dust in a new one. It's lime plaster, old wood, a century of what settled in the wall cavities, and whatever the last three renovations left behind. That's the material we're cleaning, and it changes the method.

Plaster dust is the defining problem of an old-house renovation. Traditional plaster is lime and sand over wood lath, and when it's cut, patched, or demolished it produces a powder finer than drywall dust — fine enough to drift through a closed door, settle on a high shelf two rooms away, and show up on the top of a picture frame a week later. It's also mildly alkaline, which means it dulls a wood floor finish if it's wet-mopped straight away and leaves a haze on glass. The order of operations matters: vacuum first with a HEPA machine, every surface, top to bottom, then damp-wipe, then vacuum again, then clean the floor. Skip the first vacuum and you're making plaster mud and pushing it into the floor's gaps.

Heart pine is the other signature material. Many older Tuscumbia houses have it — the dense, resin-rich pine cut from old-growth forests that isn't harvested anymore. When a floor gets sanded for refinishing, heart-pine dust is sticky with resin and it clings: to walls, to window glass, to the inside of every cabinet the sander didn't tape off. It also smells wonderful, which is the only nice thing about it. We remove it dry as much as possible, because a wet cloth turns resin dust into a smear. Microfiber, a HEPA vacuum with a brush attachment, and patience. If the floor's new finish is still curing, we don't set a bucket or a ladder foot on it, and we'll ask the floor finisher what they want us to avoid.

Old houses have more surface area than new ones, and that's the honest reason they take longer. Tall double-hung windows with divided lights mean dozens of small panes and muntins to wipe instead of one sheet of glass. Transoms over doors collect dust on both sides. Baseboards are eight inches high and often stacked with a second molding. Radiators, where they've survived, are dust caves. Picture rail, crown, plinth blocks, rosettes — every extra profile is another ledge. We plan for that at the estimate rather than discovering it on the day, because a post-renovation clean in a Victorian on North Commons and one in a new ranch of the same square footage are not the same number of hours, and we'd rather quote the real one.

The new-build version of the job is a different animal. Out toward the US-72 corridor and the newer subdivisions, a finished house has drywall dust in every register, a film of tile-saw grit in the bathrooms, adhesive residue where the protective film was peeled off the appliances, paint overspray on the hinge screws, and manufacturer stickers on every window. The dust is gypsum, which is soft and comes off easily, but there's a lot of it and it's in places you'd never think to look — inside the dishwasher, on top of the water heater, behind the toe kicks. The builder usually needs the house ready for a walkthrough or a closing, so the scope is about being complete on a date rather than careful with old material.

“Rough clean” and “final clean” aren't marketing terms; they're two different visits with different goals. A rough clean happens while trades are still finishing — after drywall and paint, usually before flooring is fully done and fixtures are set. It removes bulk debris, sweeps and vacuums, wipes the worst dust off surfaces, and gets the house to the point where the finish trades aren't grinding grit into new floors. A final clean happens after the last trade leaves and no one is going to cut, sand, or drill again. That's the detailed one: every surface, every cabinet interior, every window, every light fixture, floors last. Some projects need both; small renovations often need only the final. We'll tell you which at the estimate, and we won't sell you a rough clean you don't need.

Here's the thing about fine dust that nobody likes to say: it keeps settling for days. Air movement from the HVAC, from people walking through, from the first time a door gets opened in a warm house, stirs up what's in the ducts and the wall cavities, and a surface we wiped on Tuesday has a faint film by Friday. That isn't a missed spot; it's physics. On a large renovation we'll recommend a touch-up visit a few days after the final clean, timed after the punch list so the painter's last sanding and the electrician's last hole are behind us. On a new build we suggest running the HVAC with a fresh filter for a day before the final clean, then changing the filter again after. That gets far more dust out of the house than any amount of wiping.

We work with the builder or the contractor as much as with the homeowner, because the schedule belongs to them. We need to know when the last trade is actually out — not when they're scheduled to be out — because a final clean done before the plumber comes back to set the last faucet is a final clean done twice. We'll ask for a contact on site, a walkthrough of what's been finished, and any surfaces with a curing finish we should stay off. We bring our own supplies and equipment. We don't remove construction debris beyond what fits in a trash bag and a broom — dumpster-level cleanup stays with the crew. And we don't do the punch list; if a switch plate is missing, we'll note it, not install it.

Our post-construction checklist runs 37 items, and it's built around the places a construction crew leaves things and a normal clean never looks. Stickers and film off every window and appliance. Inside every cabinet and drawer, because sawdust from the install is in there. Registers and return grilles vacuumed and wiped. Light fixtures and fans, which are the last thing an electrician touches and the first thing that collects drywall dust. Door hardware, outlet covers, switch plates. Window tracks, which hold grit like a gutter. Closets, including the shelf nobody can reach. The toilet, tub, and sink, which trades use and don't clean. And floors last, by material: vacuum, then the right damp method, then nothing else on them until they're dry.

Timing in this climate matters more than people expect. A house that's been closed up through a summer renovation has been sitting in Tennessee Valley humidity with no air conditioning running, and dust in humid air behaves differently: it clumps, it sticks to surfaces that have picked up moisture, and mildew can start in a new bathroom before anyone's taken a shower in it. New grout and caulk want to cure before they meet water, and a wood floor's fresh finish wants a few days before it meets a damp mop. We'll ask when the finishes went down and when the HVAC came on, and we'll schedule around those answers rather than around the calendar. A clean done a day too early is a clean done again.

Post-construction cleaning starts at $526, and it's the most expensive clean we offer for a plain reason: it's the most work. The price is set by square footage and the scope — rough, final, or both — quoted as a firm number after we've talked through the project on the phone or, for larger jobs, walked it. It isn't hourly, and it isn't a range that firms up after we've started. If a house has significant old-material dust or an unusual amount of surface area, that's in the quote, not in a surprise. And if the project is small — a single bathroom remodel in an otherwise lived-in house — we'll say whether a deep clean at $276 is the smarter buy. Sometimes it is.