Cleaning homes in Wilmington
The housing around Banning Park is older than people expect. Wrigley built worker cottages there in the 1920s and the blocks survive as a preservation district: small wood-frame houses on narrow lots with porches, original casings and raised foundations. Elsewhere, from the Avalon Boulevard corridor across to East Wilmington, the pattern is bungalows from the thirties and forties, some stucco boxes from the fifties, and duplexes filling the gaps between them.
Industry is the neighbor, and it shows up in the work. Refineries, container terminals and the truck routes into the port sit within blocks of houses, and the result is a persistent fine grit on screens, sills, porch furniture and anything on the street-facing side of a home. It does not stain, but it returns constantly, so we deal with it on every visit rather than saving it for a quarterly clean.
Wilmington homes, structurally
Most homes here are one story and between 800 and 1,400 square feet, built before 1960, on lots of four to five thousand feet with a detached garage reached from the street or an alley. Foundations are usually raised, floors are hardwood under carpet or vinyl, and bathrooms are single and original. Multi-family units are compact, often stacked two up and two down with an outdoor stair. Little of it is elaborate — the work is thorough basics, done often.