Window Cleaning in Los Angeles

What window cleaning covers

• Glass washed and squeegeed on both sides, with the edges dried by hand
• Tracks vacuumed out first and then wiped, because that is where the grit sits
• Screens taken out, rinsed, dried and put back in the same opening
• Frames and sills wiped, and cobwebs cleared out of the corners
• Glass doors and the finger marks around the handles

What is usually not included

• Hard water etching, the cloudy marks left by sprinklers hitting the glass. That is a separate restoration process and it does not always come out.
• Torn screens. They are rinsed and put back, but they are not re-screened or repaired.
• Taking down blinds and curtains, or moving furniture away from the glass, which is usually left to you.

When to book window cleaning

Book this two to four times a year for a home, and more often for a storefront. Say how many floors the building has: anything above ground level changes the equipment and the price.

How long it takes

The glass itself goes quickly. Most of the time on a window job goes on the screens and the tracks. Windows that do not open from the inside, or that sit above a porch or a flowerbed, add time, because each one has to be reached from outside.

What makes the price go up

• Panes, not windows: a grid window is many small panes, each one detailed
• Second and third floor exterior glass, which brings ladders into the job
• Screens and tracks, which are often quoted apart from the glass
• Paint specks, stickers and construction dust, which have to be scraped off

What to ask before you book

• Is that price for the inside and the outside, or only the outside?
• Are the screens and the tracks in there, or is that charged on top?
• Mine have the little grids in them — do you charge me by the pane?

What window cleaning looks like in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is not one place. A Spanish bungalow on a flat street, a hillside house that is mostly glass and stairs, an apartment over a garage in between. Neighborhoods sit far apart with freeway between them. Traffic keeps a fine road grit in the air, and when there is a fire in the hills, ash settles on patios, sills and outdoor furniture.

Two things change here. Distance: a job across town is a different day than one two streets over, so the schedule is built around driving. And the housing does not repeat from one street to the next, so the work shifts from hardwood floors in a bungalow to stairs and floor-to-ceiling glass on a hillside.