Final touch-up and snagging inspection

The difference between a job that is "more or less clean" and a job ready to hand over almost never comes down to the large surfaces. It comes down to thirty or so details that are worth nothing taken one at a time, and together make the work look unfinished.

The touch-up stage therefore means changing what you are looking for: you stop cleaning and start hunting for what has not been done. It is a different exercise, and it is run with different methods.

It is also the moment at which you decide whether the property can be handed over. A job that has not been inspected is not a finished job, however good the work upstream. The full sequence, from dust removal to rinsing, is described on the full sequence of a post-construction visit.

Three simple inspection methods that reveal what a straight-on look does not.

Raking light. A lamp held almost parallel to the surface brings out residual bloom, product marks, micro-scratches and drying rings. It is the only angle under which a poorly rinsed floor gives itself away. It is done with the shutters closed, room by room.

The clean glove. A clean glove run over the tops of doors, the edges of units, the shadow gaps of a suspended ceiling and the shutter boxes says immediately whether the dust was taken off or skated over. These are the surfaces nobody looks at and everybody touches.

The low angle. Crouching down changes everything: the bottoms of skirtings, thresholds, the undersides of base units and partition returns are invisible standing up and perfectly visible at a child's height. It is also the height at which a buyer puts his bag down.

The list below is not exhaustive, but it covers the points most often missed on jobs we are called back to put right:

• contact points: handles, levers, finger plates, switches, sockets, shutter buttons
• door edges and tops of doors, hinges, door stops, thresholds and threshold strips
• the bottoms of skirtings and the corners of rooms, where cement haze collects
• finishing joints: silicone at worktops, shower trays, baths and around patio doors
• tracks and runners of sliding doors and wardrobes
• ventilation grilles and extract vents
• taps and wastes, limescale from charging the pipework
• the insides of cupboards and the undersides of shelves
• roller-shutter boxes and their webbing
• mirrors and shower screens, viewed against the light
• entryphone panels, consumer unit, control panels
• footmarks and drips left by the team's own passage, checked last of all before leaving

The touch-up cleans, it does not repair: a torn-out joint, paint to be redone or a scratched tile belongs to the trades, and we point it out rather than hide it.

The document that closes a job is not an invoice, it is a checklist. It lists the items treated room by room, ticked by the team leader and walked through with you at handover, then signed on site by both parties.

What that changes, very concretely:

• "acceptable" becomes a defined notion. It is no longer a general impression expressed three days later, it is a list of ticked, countersigned points.
• a snag is raised at the right moment, with the team and the equipment still there, when in most cases it can be cleared on the spot.
• a late challenge loses its object. An item not ticked at handover cannot be invoked afterwards to claim a free return: that is what makes the undertaking enforceable instead of a permanent dispute.

On a residential scheme the checklist is attached to the handover record — the procès-verbal de réception — signed unit by unit, as described on the apartment block and developer page.

If an item ticked on the signed checklist is not up to standard, EPUREVA comes back free of charge within 48 hours. Three points, because a vague guarantee is worth nothing:

• The return covers the point raised, not a whole new visit. That is what makes it enforceable without argument.
• It rests on the checklist, not on a general opinion. An item outside the scope of the quotation does not come into it.
• It does not cover what has been dirtied again after we left: touch-up paint, a trade coming back through, or a move-in in the meantime. A visit after new works is not part of the service.

That last line is not a get-out: it is exactly why we only come once every trade has finished, and why we check that before fixing the date.

Inspecting the finish is part of what a builders clean includes, alongside floors and skirtings, accessible windows, bathrooms and WC, stairs and minor construction marks. It has no price of its own.

What changes the price is the condition in which we find the property, declared when you request an estimate and checked from photographs:

• a few minor marks of paint, adhesive or cement: base price, 20 MAD/m² incl. VAT on standard tiles, 30 MAD/m² incl. VAT on other floors, with a minimum of 2,000 MAD for a studio, 3,000 MAD for an apartment or premises, 7,500 MAD for a villa or riad
• many marks, longer clean: +20% on the base price
• thick residue or marks on almost every surface: +40%, assessed from photographs

A job badly cleaned by someone else is priced the same way: the recorded condition sets the surcharge. Example: a 100 m² apartment in standard tiles, with thick residue almost everywhere. Floors: 100 × 20 = 2,000 MAD; the 3,000 MAD minimum applies; +40% on 3,000 MAD = 1,200 MAD; total 4,200 MAD incl. VAT, an estimate confirmed after photographs.

Depending on the property, the scope of the inspection is described on villa handover, apartment handover and a completed studio. The prices for this range are gathered on the range price page, and every service we sell on our price schedule. To have work put right, tell us what was not done.