Oven cleaning in Chudleigh

Chudleigh was largely rebuilt after the fire of 1807, which gives the centre a consistent Georgian and Victorian character with cob and thatch survivors on the lanes around it. Behind and above that sit post-war estates on the higher ground and larger houses with long gardens on the slopes.

Three ages of housing produce three kinds of booking. A cottage kitchen with a range and a low ceiling is a half day. A Georgian town house with a fitted double oven in a converted service room is a comfortable two hours. An estate house is the same again with easier access and a driveway to park on.

Nothing about the method changes between them. The hours do, and they are estimated from a photograph rather than guessed at on the doorstep.

The larger properties above the town tend to have kitchens that were extended or reordered at some point, which usually means a range cooker, a wide hob and an island with an extractor hanging over it. That combination is the most common half day job in this part of the Teign valley.

An island hood is worth its own mention. It is visible from every side, so the outside of the canopy matters as much as the filters inside it, and it is nearly always the thing people ask to have added once they have seen the cooker come up. Doing both on one visit is cheaper than two visits, because the setting up only happens once.

The steep wooded combes around the town hold damp all year and the houses in them sit in shade for much of the winter. Inside, that shows as a soft film on the wall behind the hob and on the underside of any shelf or hood above it, which is grease that has never had the chance to dry out.

It comes off readily once it is treated as grease rather than as staining, and the wall and splash back around the cooker are part of the job. What the film has been hiding, such as paint that has already lifted or a grout line that has gone, is pointed out rather than quietly cleaned around.

The town sits on the old road out of Exeter with the A38 close by, which makes it one of the more straightforward places on this list to get to and to fit into a day alongside another job nearby.

In practice that means short notice slots are more often available here than out on the moor lanes. Parking is generally simple away from the narrowest part of the centre, and where a property is on one of the tighter lanes it is worth a line in the booking so the van has somewhere sensible to go.

Being on the A38 also makes this a sensible place to pair two bookings on the same morning, which is worth knowing if a neighbour or a relative in the town has been meaning to get theirs done. Two kitchens in one trip is less driving and it usually means a slot comes up sooner.