Tile and grout cleaning in Gawler

Three kinds of Gawler home

Gawler sits about forty kilometres north of the city where the North and South Para rivers meet, and it was a town in its own right long before Adelaide's suburbs reached it. That history is still in the housing. Around Murray Street and through Gawler East and Gawler South are the stone cottages, villas and bluestone shopfront residences of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, many with a bathroom and kitchen added or rebuilt somewhere between the 1960s and now. Across the river in Willaston, Evanston and Evanston Park are the brick-veneer family homes of the 1960s to 80s, built as the town grew into a commuter suburb on the rail line. And on the edges, at Evanston Gardens, Hewett, Evanston South and the big estate climbing the hill at Gawler East, are the new homes of the last fifteen years, with the large porcelain and pale grout of every new build. Each kind has its own grout problem, and each is on the same price list.

Old floors in the old town

Stone cottages and villas in Gawler often carry a surviving old floor: slate or quarry tiles in a kitchen or passage, a tessellated verandah, or a terrazzo bathroom and laundry from a mid-century update. All three are porous, all three are damaged by acidic cleaners, and all three are cleaned with neutral products and soft agitation rather than anything that fizzes. Old topical coatings on slate are stripped where they are peeling, and the floor is then sealed with a penetrating sealer; we don't apply gloss finishes or restore stone. Cement grout in the 1960s and 70s bathrooms of those houses is usually stained right through and comes up several shades lighter with a bathroom clean ($229); where it stays patchy, colour sealing gives it one even colour, and where it has cracked or fallen out we quote a regrout through a licensed tiler.

Evanston, Willaston and the family-home floors

The brick homes across the river have the floors of their decade: brown, beige and terracotta ceramic through the kitchen and meals area, with cement grout that forty years of mopping has turned the colour of the tiles. That is a floor job by the square metre, $8/m² as standard or $11/m² where the grout has never been deep-cleaned, confirmed with you before starting: a typical 25 m² kitchen and meals area is $200. The new estates have the opposite problem, light grout on big tiles going grey from the first mop; those floors come back almost completely and suit a clear seal at $5/m² straight afterwards so the next summer's dust mops off.

Bore water, tank water and northern dust

Gawler is where the suburbs give way to rural-living blocks and the Barossa and the Adelaide Plains begin. Out at Kudla, Hillier, Angle Vale, Roseworthy and Gawler Belt plenty of properties run on a bore for the garden and sometimes the house, and a good number are on rainwater tanks. Bore water on the plains is often high in iron and leaves orange-brown staining along grout lines and around taps that ordinary cleaners won't shift; it needs its own treatment and the result depends on how long it has been building, so tell us and send a photo. Tank water is the reverse: softer than Adelaide mains, so showers get less limescale and more of the soap-scum and mould side. Everywhere north of the city, the hot north wind brings fine dust that settles into floor grout and alfresco tiles faster than it does near the coast; sealed grout releases it with a mop, unsealed grout keeps it.

How Gawler bookings work

Gawler and Roseworthy are the northern edge of our regular service area, and to keep the city prices with no travel charge we group jobs up here with other northern bookings rather than sending a van up the highway for one shower. Give us two or three dates that suit, and say if there is a hard deadline such as a tenancy handover, a sale campaign or a Barossa holiday-let changeover. If the property is on a dirt road or behind a gate, put that in the notes. Further north toward Freeling, Kapunda and the Barossa towns, ask in the form with a couple of date options; it depends on grouping.

What we do in Gawler

• Showers and bathrooms: mould, soap scum, hard-water film, $149 a shower recess, $229 a bathroom, $179 each extra bathroom
• Floors, splashbacks and alfresco tiles: $8/m² for living areas, kitchens, hallways and outdoor areas; splashback $69
• Grout cleaning on its own: every line pre-treated, scrubbed, rinsed and extracted
• Grout sealing: clear sealing from $5/m², colour sealing for stained grout
• Shower regrouting and grout repair: quoted after an inspection, done by a licensed tiler

Covers Gawler, Gawler East, Gawler South, Gawler West, Gawler Belt, Evanston, Evanston Gardens, Evanston Park, Evanston South, Willaston, Hewett, Kudla, Hillier, Angle Vale and Roseworthy. Every price is published.