House Washing — Richardson Street, Albert Park

A Victorian front is decoration held on with lime, timber and old paint. Mouldings, brackets and cast detail stand proud of the wall, which is exactly where the dirt collects and exactly where pressure does damage. The house was going to market, so the facade had to come up clean without anything being stripped off it or bleached out of it. The back of the house was a different problem: plainer surfaces, more of them, and windows and fly screens carrying the film that shows in every photograph taken from inside.

Low pressure on the front, and that decision came before anything else. Water at high pressure lifts old paint, opens lime mortar and takes the edges off cast detail, and none of that announces itself until it has already happened. The facade was washed at a pressure the surface could carry, with the detail worked rather than driven at. The rear was soft washed, the same low-pressure approach across larger and plainer surfaces. Windows and fly screens came last, because glass cleaned before the walls gets dirty again on the first rinse.

• Victorian facade washed at low pressure, mouldings and cast detail included
• Rear elevation soft washed
• Windows cleaned
• Fly screens cleaned
• Glass finished after the walls, not before
• Before and after photographs supplied

• Facade clean with the detail intact, nothing stripped or chipped
• Rear elevation brought up to match the front
• Glass and screens clear for the listing photographs and inspections
• House ready to go to market