Cleaning homes in Playa del Rey
The scale is unusual for this part of Los Angeles. Below the bluff the streets are short, the buildings are two and three storeys, and much of the housing dates from the 1950s and 1960s: small units with tiled bathrooms, aluminium sliders and a shared laundry room. Up in the Del Rey Hills the houses grow and the views open out, but the whole place still fits inside a few dozen blocks.
What it does have is weather. Sand blows off Dockweiler and drifts across Vista del Mar. Marine air keeps a salt film on anything facing west. And with the airport immediately south, exterior sills, screens and patio rails collect a fine dark grit most residents stop noticing after a year. Windows tend to stay shut against the noise, which means interior dust settles rather than clearing.
Playa del Rey homes, structurally
Compact is the rule. Most units run 600 to 1,200 square feet with vinyl or tile through the wet rooms and carpet in the bedrooms, and the stairs are external rather than internal, a walk-up landing instead of a staircase inside the home. Older buildings have single-pane sliders whose bottom channels fill with sand within a week. The Del Rey Hills houses are the larger stock: three bedrooms on a proper lot, often with a garage that has quietly become storage.