Tile and grout cleaning in Modbury and Tea Tree Gully

The suburbs that grew up with Tea Tree Plaza

Modbury is the hub of the north-east, built around Tea Tree Plaza, the O-Bahn interchange and Modbury Hospital, and the suburbs around it (Modbury North and Heights, Hope Valley, Ridgehaven, St Agnes, Tea Tree Gully itself) were mostly subdivided in the 1960s and 70s as Adelaide pushed up into the foothills. A great many of those homes still have their first bathroom: pink, mushroom or pale-blue wall tiles, a small-format floor, a bath with a shower over it or a separate recess with a framed screen, and cement grout that is now fifty years old. That grout is nearly always darker than the owner remembers, because it has absorbed half a century of soap and water and mould. A bathroom clean at $229 brings it a long way back; colour sealing ($299 on top) is the honest answer where the staining has gone right through, and if the grout has cracked or fallen out around the bath or the recess floor we quote a regrout through a licensed tiler instead.

Slate entries and 70s floors

The seventies left the north-east with two signature floors. The first is slate, usually in the entry hall and sometimes right through the living areas, dark and uneven and often coated years ago with a gloss sealer that has since yellowed and peeled in the walkways. The second is the brown and orange ceramic of the kitchen and family room, with grout that mopping has turned the colour of the tiles. We clean slate with neutral products (never acid) and can strip failed topical coatings where they are lifting, then seal with a penetrating sealer; we don’t apply new gloss finishes. Ceramic floors are $8/m², and the usual Modbury kitchen-and-meals area of about 20 m² is $160.

Units, villas and downsizing

Because the original owners of the 60s and 70s homes are now in their eighties, Modbury and Hope Valley have a lot of unit groups, retirement villas and homettes, and a steady flow of houses being cleaned up for sale or for the next generation to rent out. Grout is the thing agents and tenants notice first in the photos. A clean, with colour sealing where the grout is patchy, is a small spend that makes an original bathroom and kitchen look cared for. For a unit, mention parking and any strata rules on working hours in the notes.

Hard water and the reservoir suburbs

Hope Valley sits beside its reservoir, but the water that comes out of north-eastern taps is the same hard Adelaide mains supply as everywhere else, and in a fifty-year-old shower the limescale film has had longer than most to bond with the soap. It comes off with the right scale treatment during a clean, and a clear seal on the grout ($69 for a shower) keeps the next layer on the surface where it wipes away.

What we do in Modbury

• 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 Modbury, Modbury North, Modbury Heights, Tea Tree Gully, Hope Valley, Ridgehaven, St Agnes, Banksia Park, Vista, Highbury and Dernancourt. Every price is published.