Wood walls and ceilings clean differently than drywall
Sashco, which makes stains and chinking for log homes, describes interior logs as a collection site for dust, pet dander, grease, and grime, and recommends a wipe-down or vacuum every two or three months, washing with a wood-friendly soap and water on a firm sponge, with extra care in corners and on the logs near cooking areas. That matches how we work, and the order matters. Dry comes first: a brush-head vacuum run along each course of logs and into the chinking seams, where grit collects and a damp cloth would only pack it tighter. Then damp, using a wood-safe cleaner on a wrung-out sponge, worked along the grain rather than across it, with nothing left standing on the surface. Tongue-and-groove ceilings and exposed beams get the same treatment, just from a ladder. Two things we ask before we start. What finish is on the wood, since a clear-coated wall and a bare one behave differently under a sponge. And whether you keep a product you would rather we use, because if you do, we would rather use yours than introduce a new one to a wall you have maintained for years.
What a working fireplace puts on the rest of the room
A fireplace you actually use does not keep its residue inside the firebox. Fine soot rides the room's air and settles on the mantel, on the stone above it, on the wall facing the hearth, and on whatever sits on the mantel shelf, which is why the area around a working fireplace often looks dull well before the rest of the room does. Our deep clean takes in the hearth and surround, the glass doors, the screen and tools, the mantel and everything on it, and the stone or brick face as far as it reaches. Cold ash gets vacuumed with equipment meant for it, not a household vacuum, because fine ash passes straight through an ordinary filter and comes back out into the room you just cleaned. Soot that has worked its way into porous stone will lighten rather than lift, and we would rather say that before we start than after. The flue is a separate matter altogether: the Chimney Safety Institute of America, following NFPA 211, holds that chimneys, fireplaces, and vents should be inspected at least once a year for soundness, freedom from deposits, and correct clearances, and that inspection belongs to a certified chimney sweep.
The order a great room has to be cleaned in
In a vaulted room the work has a fixed sequence, and taking it out of order means doing parts of it twice. Ceilings first: the boards, the beams crossing them, and the joints where the two meet. Then whatever hangs between, which in a timber house is often an antler, iron, or wagon-wheel fixture carrying a dozen separate surfaces of its own. Then fan blades, which throw dust outward and leave a visible ring on the ceiling around them. Then the loft railing, its top edge and the posts beneath, and then the upper window glass and the transoms above the main sash on a gable wall. Only after all of that do the surfaces at living height get touched, and the floor comes last of anything. The reason is not fussiness. Everything loosened overhead has to land somewhere, and it lands on whatever has not been done yet. We bring extension poles and ladders for the reach. If a piece needs more than a ladder, a heavy fixture on a winch for instance, we will say so and leave it rather than improvise at height.
