Don’t you love some of those reality TV shows where people have to makeover a house with the help of expert builders? They’re surprisingly You see the shabby, scruffy interior at the start of the project – possibly complete with ghastly 1970s carpets and wallpaper – then the sleek, shiny, well-lit modern result at the end. You get to see people picking paint colours and you might see renovators and builders at work. However, there’s one thing that they don’t show you: all the cleaning work.

Builders can be messy people. If you’ve ever put your own home through renovations, you’ll know exactly what I mean. To watch some of those shows, you’d think the process was really easy and didn’t create or leave much mess, so it can be a shock when you find out what really happens. In fact, some parts of the renovation and redecoration process create so much mess that there’s a very good reason why they don’t show it on camera: it would ruin the expensive cameras. If a belt sanding machine gets involved, there will be a lot of dust…

Typical Interior Mess Left By Builders

You’d think that interior renovations would be simpler and would leave less mess. This is true up to a point – but they still create a lot of rubbish and other mess that needs to be tidied up by somebody. Take the renovations done by a friend of mine over the last few years (this person had an old cottage that needed a fair amount of work). Here’s just a sample of the waste, mess and rubbish that they had to deal with:

• dust everywhere in a room that needed to be sanded as part of the process of lining and sealing the walls… before the paint even went on;
• old paint that needed to be stripped off the window frames (those paint strippers don’t make old paint magically disappear – they just loosen it and what comes off has to go somewhere);
• old wallpaper stripped off the walls – if this got damp, it tried to stick itself to anything it touched;
• old linoleum flooring and very ratty frayed carpet that was pulled off the floor – to say nothing of the extra insulation (?) in the form of 1950s newspapers that were found underneath it;
• scraps of vinyl flooring, carpet underlay and carpet that were cut off while the new flooring was being laid, as old houses don’t always have perfect 90-degree angles in the corners and floor layouts don’t always come in perfect squares;
• sawdust and offcuts of wood from putting in pantry space and installing a new kitchen counter – and the old kitchen unit itself
• bits of plaster
• scraps of wire and insulating plastic from where the electrician rewired a plug or three;
• ends of pipe (plastic and copper) left from an upgrade in the bathroom;
• sawdust, sawdust and more sawdust from just about everything.

The Mess Goes Outside As Well…

Of course, builders and renovators don’t just deal with the insides of houses. Exteriors need as much work as interiors. The same problem of mess and waste happens when work is done on a building site for new construction, as well as for exterior renovations (such as that new deck out the back). Mess left outside by builders in the form of sawdust may not necessarily be a big deal, but there’s a lot more to it than just sawdust. Builders often leave offcuts, scraps, odds and ends, rubble, old nails, shards of plaster bits of corrugated iron and much, much more.

If you saw a building site after the builders have been in but before the construction cleaning crew had been through, you’d see a bombsite. If you were expecting to come and see a shiny new house (OK, you will) and a garden or yard that’s just ready for the kids to play in, you may be disappointed. There will be all sorts of mess to deal with.

Why Don’t Builders Clean Up After Themselves?

More than one person who’s had the tradies in to do a spot of construction or renovation are left wondering why on earth they didn’t clean up after themselves. It’s a good question. It’s fair to say, though, that some tradespeople are worse than others. Some do a tolerable job of removing offcuts and ends (the plumber hired by my friend, for example). Others… don’t. They just do the job they were hired to do (fair enough) and head away, leaving all their mess untouched. Others are somewhere in the middle, possibly taking away the big bits and leaving behind the little bits.

It’s quite common in such situations for the person requiring the renovation – or doing it themselves; let’s not forget all the hard-working DIY types out there – to hire a skip to put all the rubbish in. This is a step in the right direction, as it means that a lot of the rubbish (offcuts, scraps, rubble, debris, etc.) can be dealt with right away. However, even with all the big stuff gone, there’s still a lot of mess. It’s hard to put plaster dust and sawdust in a skip…

So why don’t builders clean up after themselves? The simple reason for this is that cleaning, especially to this degree, is a specialist job, and builders are trained in other skills. They have their own equipment and their own skillset; professional cleaners have another set. What’s more, some of the equipment needed to carry out a thorough builders’ clean can be quite bulky, and we all know how much the typical tradesperson has to carry around with them as they go.

On top of that, a lot of tradies are pushed for time. Heck, it’s difficult to find one without a huge waiting list. Given this high demand, a lot of tradies just don’t have the time to fiddle around cleaning up every single last scrap of plaster, sawdust and bit of plastic. I can’t say I blame them, really.

The Solution: Professional Builders’ Cleaning Services

You could have a go at doing your own builders’ clean. This is an option if you have the right tools and a lot of patience. It’s also a good idea if the renovations in question have only been tidy a little refreshed – replacing that broken hinge on the bathroom cabinet, installing a new towel rail or touching up the chipped paint on the kitchen shelves. These little jobs don’t require much cleaning and you can probably do a lot of it with an ordinary vacuum cleaner – as long as you sweep or pick up anything bulky that might block it.

With more extensive work, there’s a lot more cleaning that needs to be done. Whole rooms can be dusty after interior plastering has been sanded (which is why the person doing the plastering has to wear a really good mask, eye protection and probably overalls). This means that the whole room will need to be dusted: dado rails, architraves, light switches, ceiling fans, the works!

Sometimes, dust and scraps aren’t the only mess left behind by builders and renovators. Sometimes, there can be little bits of paint, glue or plaster where there shouldn’t be, and these will need to be addressed quickly. This often requires special knowledge, equipment and cleaning products that the average DIY person doesn’t have.

For all these reasons, it can be much more efficient and less frustrating to call in a specialist professional to do the builders’ cleaning work for you. This is especially the case in the very common situation where the renovations and home modifications are being done because someone has limited mobility (e.g., installing ramps and handrails). In this case, professional cleaning help is an absolute must.

As with any good cleaning service, make sure that the builders’ cleaning company you choose allows you do specify how much you want them to do, just in case you want to do some yourself. A good company will listen to you and do things the way that you want, to be sure to ask around if you have to.