We vacuum the dust before we wipe

Construction dust lands on every surface

A remodel can look finished the day the painters leave and still not be ready to live in. Sanding drywall joints puts a fine white dust in the air, and it settles on every flat surface, including the inside of closed cabinets. Then there is what each trade leaves behind. Paint specks end up on the glass, and new windows arrive covered in stickers and glue. Post construction cleaning takes all of that off before furniture or people move in.

Order matters on this job. We start at the ceiling with the fan blades and light fixtures, because anything knocked loose up there falls on whatever is below. Next come the vent covers and the tops of door frames and upper cabinets. Then the walls and window sills, and the tracks the windows slide in. Cabinets get vacuumed inside before they are wiped. Baseboards come after that, and the floors are always last, because every step above drops dust onto them.

When it is done right, you can run a finger along the top of a door frame and it comes away clean. Drawers open without grit in the corners. The window tracks are clear, so the windows slide without scraping. Glass shows no haze when the afternoon sun hits it, and a dark floor dries without a white film. That film is the sign someone mopped before they vacuumed, and it shows up in every footprint.

• Ceiling fans and vent covers dusted first
• Cabinets and drawers vacuumed inside and out
• Window tracks and sills cleared of grit
• Paint specks and stickers taken off glass
• Baseboards wiped, floors vacuumed and then mopped

Dry wiping only spreads drywall dust around

Drywall dust is gypsum sanded finer than flour. A dry rag does not pick it up. It pushes the dust across the surface and leaves a white streak behind. A feather duster is worse, because it throws the dust back into the air to land somewhere else. That is why a quick wipe after a remodel looks fine at first and dusty again by evening.

So every surface gets vacuumed first with a brush attachment and a fine filter, walls and the inside of drawers included. Then we wipe with a damp cloth and rinse it often. Too much water is its own problem. Wet drywall dust turns into a paste that dries hard in grout lines and in the corners of cabinet boxes. Mopping a floor before the dust is vacuumed up leaves the same paste spread thin across it.

The air conditioner is the part people forget. If it ran during the work, dust was pulled into the return and blown back out through every vent in the house. We vacuum and wipe the vent covers and the return grille, but the filter behind that grille is usually full. Put a new filter in right after the clean, or the system keeps spreading dust onto the rooms we just finished. Cleaning inside the ductwork is a separate trade.

Gilbert homes bring their own cleanup problems

Most houses around Gilbert are wood frame with stucco on the outside. When a remodel adds a window or a sliding door, the stucco around it gets cut and patched. That throws a gritty cement dust. It packs into window tracks and sliding door tracks and sits on every sill. Grit left in a track grinds on the rollers every time the door moves. So we vacuum the tracks out and wipe them before we touch the glass.

Walls and ceilings in most of these homes have a knockdown or orange peel texture. The bumps hold dust in a way a smooth wall does not. Wipe a textured wall with a wet cloth and the dust smears into the low spots, then dries as a gray film. A soft brush on the vacuum lifts it out instead. Flat paint is the other catch, because scrubbing it too hard leaves shiny patches that show in daylight.

Tile is the most common floor here, and many kitchens and showers use travertine or another natural stone. New tile often carries a thin gray haze left over from grouting. Light haze on porcelain or ceramic comes off with careful wiping. Stone is different. Vinegar and the acid cleaners sold for grout haze eat into travertine. They leave dull spots that no amount of wiping will fix, so on stone we use a neutral cleaner and take more time.

Desert heat and dust change the job

Heat is the first thing working against this job. Stickers on a new window that faces west sit in hard afternoon sun, and the glue bakes onto the glass. A label that would have peeled off cleanly the day it went on now tears into little flakes with sticky residue under them. Paint drips and caulk smears harden fast in a hot room too. The sooner we get to them after the work, the less scraping the glass needs.

Dry air makes the dust worse. With so little moisture, fine dust stays in the air longer and keeps settling for days after the sanding stops. Then there is monsoon season, when a dust storm can roll through in the afternoon. If the garage or a patio door was open during the work, a layer of desert dust sits on top of the drywall dust. We clean the garage floor and the door tracks too, since that dust gets tracked straight back inside.

Gilbert has hard water, and it shows up on every new fixture. The first test run of a new faucet or shower leaves white mineral spots on chrome and glass. Wiping with tap water and letting it air dry only adds more. So we wipe new fixtures and glass shower doors, then dry them by hand. Spots left sitting on shower glass can etch into it over time, and then no cleaner takes them off.

We clean new shops before they open

Business spaces collect the same dust, and usually more of it. A new suite in a Gilbert strip center can go from an empty shell to finished walls and floors in a short time. All of that dust has to come out before shelves are stocked or computers are plugged in. Dust that lands on stock means wiping every product on the shelf, and dust pulled into a computer fan stays there.

Many suites have a drop ceiling, the kind with a metal grid and tiles that lift out. Dust lands on top of those tiles, and the first time the air conditioner kicks on, some of it drifts down. So we wipe the grid and the light covers before any of the walls or floors. The big front windows get their own pass, since outside stucco and paint work leaves specks across the whole storefront.

Our hours run until 11:00 PM most nights. That lets the clean happen after the contractor leaves for the day, instead of around people still working. The timing that matters most is the punch list, the list of small fixes at the end of a job. Painters and electricians often come back for those, and every visit brings new dust. If your opening date is fixed, book the main clean after the big work and a light touch-up the night before you open.