How we clean Kensington
Ask anyone who has had work done in Kensington and the first thing they mention is the road. Streets off the Arlington were cut into the hill decades before anyone imagined a full-size van, they carry parked cars on one side, and there is often no sidewalk to stand on while you unload. Our crews plan the approach before the day: where the vehicle can legally sit, whether the house is above or below the road, and how many steps are involved.
Then there are the houses themselves. A three-bedroom here can easily have four floor levels, with the entry on the middle one, bedrooms below and a kitchen that opens onto a deck in the treetops. Cleaning it in an efficient order matters more than raw speed, because carrying a vacuum up and down the same stairs three times is how an hour disappears. Fog rolls over the ridge from Tilden Regional Park most mornings, and the damp it leaves shows up as mildew on bathroom ceilings and window frames.
Kensington homes, structurally
Nearly everything is detached and owner-occupied, built from the 1920s through the 1960s and added to since. Styles jump from period-revival cottages to postwar contemporaries within a single block. What they share is verticality: entry-level living, bedrooms a flight down, a garage tucked under the house, and exterior stairs connecting all of it. Interiors favor hardwood and tile over carpet, ceilings are often open-beam, and the windows are large because the view is the point. There is no apartment stock to speak of.