window cleaners in Paisley, Scotland – Keen2Clean
Welcome to the Keen2Clean blog! We’re a professional window cleaning company based right here in the historic toon of Paisley, just outside Glasgow. We’ve been scrubbing, squeegeeing and sparkling up windows all across the region for over 10 years now. From cozy cottages to massive commercial properties, we’ve seen it all when it comes to getting grubby glass gee-geed up to showroom standards.
If you’re fae the Paisley area, you’ve probably spotted our bright yellow vans zipping about, ladders and poles sticking out every which way. We’re a familiar sight slogging away up and down the streets of Ferguslie, Hunterhill, Charleston, Shortroods, Ralston and beyond. There’s no tassie or close too small or big for us! We thoroughly enjoying giving Paisley’s windies a good old-fashioned cleaning until they’re pure Baltic.
The Keen2Clean squad is a close-knit team of hard-working professionals from right across the local Paisley area. Our founder is Jamie Gilchrist, a Buddies born-and-bred who had the entrepreneurial bug from an early age.
Jamie grew up in the Ferguslie Park scheme, running about the Blackie Burnies and streets with his mates. Even as a wee bam, he was always hustling – doing paper rounds, delivering groceries for the old wifies, cutting lawns, you name it. He had a real strong work ethic from day one.
After leaving St. Andrew’s Academy, Jamie got a joab as a builders’ laborer, hauling bricks and tarting roofs all over the place. He worked his way up to be a trades foreman, supervising sites everywhere from the new Reservoir Tarn up in Gleniffer Braes to the flatted properties in Hunterville and the Town Centre.
But Jamie realized he was too much of a free spirit and self-starter to toil for someone else’s company forever. By his late 20s, he was determined to work for himself and call his own shots.
That’s when the window cleaning idea came in. Jamie’s auld dear was a stickler for keeping her modest Millview home spotless inside and out. She was always tutting and moaning about how “they windies are gitting gunk on them fae the bin lorries!” Jamie, being the good loon that he was, would regularly help clean the outside glass to keep her happy.
It got him thinking – there were shedloads of houses with windows needing cleaning all over the Paisley area. From the cozy traditional cottages and tenements in Ferguslie to the mair modern housing developments and flats in places like Penilee, Dykebar and Charleston, nobody could be bothered busting out the ladders and sills themselves. Aulder folks especially struggled.
So in 2012, Jamie took the plunge and started Keen2Clean Window Cleaners. He used his building trade experience and knowhow for scaffolding and ladderwork to get up high. Jamie also insisted on using professional-grade squeegees, soaps and tools right from the off. None of that dishwater and rags pish! If you’re taking cash for cleaning windies, you better have the proper supplies and training.
At first, it was just Jamie doing a small round of residential jobs around the Paisley streets where he grew up – Glenburn, Meikleriggs, Brabloch and Foxbar. He was up bright and early every morning at 5am scrubbing away, getting himself soakit courtesy of the wonderfully unpredictable Renfrewshire weather. Rain or shine, Jamie was out there cleaning like a man possessed.
Pretty soon word spread, and Keen2Clean started getting more and more business. Jamie hired on his best mate Davey fae the Hauplands across the River Cart as his first employee. Then it was expanding into commercial properties, doing the big office parks and retail units like those at Wallneuk, Arkleston and Linwood.
Before long, Keen2Clean was the go-to window cleaning outfit across all of Paisley and even into neighboring Renfrew, Linwood and Elderslie. Jamie took on new staff like young Gaz fae the Milton estate, a quiet lad who had a laser focus for getting those glass panels gleaming.
Vans were added and a storage yard opened up on Renfrew Road near the old mill to handle all the gear and supplies. Contracts were won for dream jobs like maintaining the immaculate windows of the stunning Paisley Abbey and council buildings at Paisley Town Hall. They even do Paisley Buddies’ beloved St. Mirren’s football stadium!
Ten years on, Keen2Clean has grown into Paisley’s premier professional window cleaning company with over 20 staff and a reputation for quality that’s second to none. They’ve gied the sparkling treatment to windies all over the town – the massive Piazza shopping complex, the new hospice at Whitehaugh, the museums, schools, churches and landmark buildings.
When you see Jamie’s team of daft cleaners in their bright yellow raingear laughing and joking as they go about their work, it’s clear they take pride in their jobs. Being part of Keen2Clean is like being part of a big family – you look out for each other. And you definitely keep each other right!
Young Dean Deekie fae Gallowhill likes to rib the older crew by blaring his mobile tunes, while madcap Fergie from Shortroods tries distracting them by shouting random sitcom catchphrases through the sills. Hardcase Richie Wilson, raised in the Milton scheme, keeps the young team’s antics in line with his famous glower and baritone bark.
Jamie’s biggest wind up merchant is veteran George Bell, a cheeky 50-something Feegie whose wit is as sharp as his window squeegee skills. “Geordie” is always on hand to dish out colourful insults and steaming patter to rising apprentices like Jamesy McGowan fae Ralston and Francis Smith, the big lad from Hunterhill.
But the sense of camaraderie runs deep at Keen2Clean – George might call someone a “radge walloper” one minute but he’ll be offering them his last fag or a swig from his Mug Greener if they’re having a bad day. That’s what you’ll find across this squad of hardworking professionals – a shared sense of having each other’s backs, no matter what life throws at you.
Jamie makes sure his crew are looked after properly too. They get top-notch equipment and unlimited supplies – no cutting corners with manky buckets of grungy grey water here. Proper technique and safety training is provided for harness work, ladder procedures and commercial cleanings.
He’ll also shut down the whole operation if the weather poses any risk whatsoever to his team’s well-being – no job is worth someone getting hurt over. Jamie has a strict policy forbidding time-wasting sketching or joking with customers too. As he tells it: “We ur here tae work, ees ur grees tae produce windies of shudderin’ clarity the workmanship o which wid wipmert ay ees!”
In between big jobs, you might find Keen2Clean tackling those neglected little tasks that other companies won’t bother with. They’ll deally get the gunk off your wee corner shop’s front for a couple of quid. Clear pigeon fouling off your awnings and signs. Even spruce up your caravan or motorhome windows for a tidy fee.
Recent years have seen the team take on some truly epic cleaning challenges. Like battling the baked-on construction cement and grime from the new M8 bridges and overpasses. Scraping away decades of persistent pigeon residue on the historic Anchor Mills building in Ferguslie.
Or spending weeks carefully dissolving and wiping away the mineral deposits left behind from rogue gas fracking tests in the Gleniffer Braes – a painstaking hand-cleaning for every individual pane of glass in the Environmental Study Centre cottages up there.
Massive jobs like those take incredible dedication and skill from Keen2Clean’s crew. But it’s all in a day’s work when you’re the best window cleaning pros that Renfrewshire has to offer. Nothing fazes this squad of ladder-climbing, glass-polishers working tirelessly to make Paisley’s windows look mint.
So here’s to them – Jamie, Geordie, Richie, Gaz, Dean, Fergie, Jamesy, Francis