Pinole, from a cleaner's point of view
Pinole Valley is where most of the work is. The tracts that filled the valley floor between about 1958 and 1975 are generous by Bay Area standards: single-story or split, three or four bedrooms, an attached two-car garage, a family room off the kitchen, and a back garden big enough to matter. They are easy houses to clean well because the layout is open and the surfaces are conventional — no unsealed antique woodwork, no four half-levels.
Old Town is the opposite. The blocks around Tennent Avenue and Fernandez Park hold hip-roof and Queen Anne cottages from the 1880s onward, small, dark, and full of trim that has been painted a dozen times. Above both, on the ridges, later houses take the weather off the strait: wind-driven dust on the west-facing windows and a lot more of it in the dry months. Three quite different jobs, one ZIP code, and a schedule that has to account for all of them.
What Pinole homes are like to clean
Around three-quarters of the housing is detached and owner-occupied. The valley tracts set the norm: 1,400 to 1,800 square feet, three or four bedrooms, two baths, carpet in the bedrooms and tile or laminate through the wet rooms, and a slab or crawl-space foundation. Older cottages near the creek run half that size with high ceilings, narrow stairs and painted board trim. Hillside sections add split levels, retaining walls and steep driveways. Townhome developments off Appian Way bring shared entries and small private patios.