Palo Alto, from a cleaner's point of view
Professorville and Old Palo Alto hold the oldest houses on the Peninsula outside San Francisco: Craftsman, Shingle and Colonial Revival, built between 1895 and 1925, with unsealed fir floors, leaded glass and radiators. They are beautiful and they are fragile. The wrong product on original woodwork is not a small mistake, so crews use pH-neutral cleaners on anything carrying a hundred-year finish and keep water off bare board.
Cross Oregon Expressway and the century changes. Greenmeadow and Fairmeadow are Eichler subdivisions: post-and-beam, radiant slab, glass from floor to ceiling, an atrium in the middle of the plan. Midtown between them is straightforward postwar ranch. Three kinds of house, three kinds of visit, and the only thing they share is the leaf litter under those protected trees, which finds its way indoors on every pair of shoes.
What Palo Alto homes are like to clean
Two-thirds of the stock predates 1970, and it shows in the details: plaster walls, cast-iron tubs, built-in cabinetry, and floors of oak or fir rather than laminate. Square footage sits between 1,400 and 2,400 for most single-family homes, on lots deep enough for a detached studio at the back. Tap water arrives from Hetch Hetchy and is unusually soft, so glass and chrome stay clear far longer than they do further south. The recurring enemy is dust and pollen, not scale.