A Whole Backyard in One Day, Hillsborough

The situation

This Hillsborough property has an outdoor room rather than a patio: an L-shaped outdoor kitchen with stone counters and stainless appliances, a covered cabana with built-in bench seating and a fireplace, and seven separate groups of furniture spread across a brick terrace.

Everything had been outside through the summer. Nothing was damaged — it was the usual mix of airborne dust, mildew starting in the grain of the Polywood and a film of cooking grease around the kitchen. The difficulty on a job like this is not the dirt. It is that six different materials need six different treatments, and using the wrong one on any of them causes damage that cleaning cannot undo.

What we did

• Top down, dry before wet. Cobwebs off the cabana ceiling and beams, then leaves and grit swept from the bench boxes and the floor, before any water went down. Doing this in the other order means cleaning the same surface twice.
• Pool cover, grills and outlets protected. The pool is tented and the kitchen has live electrical outlets. Everything was covered and runoff directed away before the first rinse.
• Polywood and wicker treated for mildew. An oxygen-based cleaner with dwell time, then detail brushes along every groove and slat joint. This is where mildew actually lives on outdoor furniture.
• Rope and woven seating by hand only. The loungers are rope-woven and the sectional is resin wicker over an aluminium frame. Both were cleaned with a soft brush and mild solution. Pressure on either of them stretches the weave permanently.
• Stone and stainless separately. Neutral, non-acidic chemistry on the stone counters — acid etches stone permanently. Stainless cleaned and polished along the direction of the grain.

The result

All seven furniture groups, the outdoor kitchen and the cabana were finished in one working day with two technicians. The Polywood came back white rather than grey-green, the stainless lost its grease film, and the cabana built-ins read as painted woodwork again rather than as storage boxes.

The client declined the optional extras on the quote — grill interiors and pressure washing of the brick and masonry — so those were not part of this job. The brick in the photos looks dark because it is damp from rinsing the furniture, not because it was washed.

Questions people ask about this job

Can you pressure wash outdoor furniture?

Only some of it. Brick, concrete and stone take pressure well at a wide fan and a safe distance. Rope-woven loungers, resin wicker and teak do not — pressure stretches woven seating permanently and raises the soft grain in teak. On a mixed set, the woven pieces are cleaned by hand regardless of what else is being washed.

How do you clean an outdoor kitchen without damaging it?

Stone counters get neutral, non-acidic chemistry, because acidic cleaners etch stone and the marks do not come out. Stainless is cleaned and polished along the grain, never across it. Electrical outlets, the grill interior and any gas components are covered before any rinsing starts.

How long does it take to clean a full backyard set?

A large outdoor living area with a kitchen, a covered structure and six to eight furniture groups takes two technicians about five to six hours. Smaller patio sets — a table, chairs and a couple of loungers — are usually a two to three hour job for one person.

FreshTouchSF provides carpet cleaning, upholstery cleaning, handyman services and pressure washing in Hillsborough and across the San Francisco Bay Area. See more jobs in our project journal.