Not All Windows are Born Equal…

Here's something that took me a while to learn, and that most people never think about: treating every window the same way would ruin half of them.

It sounds like the careful thing to do, doesn't it. Same effort, same scrub, same attention on every pane in the house. Fair. Even-handed. But it's actually the lazy version of the job dressed up as diligence. Windows aren't all born equal — different glass, different frames, different age, different problems — and the skill isn't treating them all the same. It's knowing which is which, and giving each one what it actually needs.

Let me show you what I mean.

The frame that would fall apart

Some frames are hanging on by memory. Old timber that's been painted over six times, soft with damp, the putty gone to dust. If I went at a frame like that the way I'd go at solid uPVC, bits of it would come away in my hand — and then it's not a clean, it's a repair bill.

So I read the frame before I touch it. A delicate one gets a gentle hand and a soft touch. Knowing when to ease off is as much a part of the job as knowing when to put the work in.

The vents that drip

Trickle vents along the top of a frame hold water. You don't always see it, but it's sitting up there, and the moment you clean the glass below, gravity does its thing and a little run of dirty water tracks straight down your nice clean pane.

If you don't know to expect it, you leave streaks and never understand why. If you do, you work the glass in the right order so the vent has its drip before the final rinse, not after. Small thing. Makes all the difference.

The metal that streaks

Metal frames — aluminium, the older steel-framed ones — are unforgiving. Get the technique wrong and they'll throw streaks across the glass that timber or plastic never would. The water behaves differently against the edge, and if you rush it you'll spend longer fixing the marks than you would have spent doing it properly the first time.

So metal gets a different approach. Not more effort, necessarily. Just the right effort, in the right way.

The glass that's older than I am

And then there's old glass. Original panes in a tenement, hand-blown stuff with a faint ripple in it, leaded sections held together with lead that's gone brittle. You can feel the difference the moment you start. That glass has been in the building longer than anyone living in it, and it deserves to be treated like the survivor it is.

You don't blast it. You don't lean on it. You respect it, and you clean it in a way that means it's still there for the next person.

So, not equally

When I started out, I thought caring about every window meant treating every window the same. I had it backwards. Treating them all the same is exactly how you damage the fragile ones and shortchange the difficult ones.

What I actually owe every job is the appropriate care — the frame that needs a feather touch, the vent that needs the right order of work, the metal that needs patience, the old glass that needs respect. Same attention, every time. But never the same hands.

That's the bit you're paying for, really. Not someone who cleans every window the same. Someone who knows why they shouldn't.