How we clean Belvedere
There is almost nowhere to leave a vehicle. San Rafael Avenue and the lanes winding up Belvedere Island are narrow, largely unstriped, and lined with retaining walls instead of curb space. A crew scouts the approach on the first visit, settles on a spot that blocks nobody’s gate, and walks in from there. If your driveway holds one car and you can spare it for a couple of hours, say so when you book.
Inside, these houses were built up rather than out. It is common for the front door to open onto the top floor, with bedrooms and baths dropping away below toward the water, so a team works downward and carries everything with it. Homes around the Lagoon are the exception: level, one or two stories, dock at the back, and far simpler to move through in an afternoon.
What we walk into in Belvedere
Two very different patterns sit inside one small city. The island and Corinthian Island hold older shingled houses and rebuilt contemporaries on slopes steep enough that the garage may be two floors below the kitchen. The Lagoon side is flat, mostly postwar and later, with dock frontage and single-level plans. Square footage is high across both — four thousand feet is unremarkable — and finishes are hard: stone, wide-plank wood, and a great deal of glass facing Richardson Bay.