Window Cleaning in White Bear Lake, MN

White Bear Lake has the most varied housing stock of any city we serve, and that's what makes it interesting work. Within a few blocks you can go from a 1910s house near the lake to a 1960s rambler to a new build with a wall of glass facing the water.

What White Bear Lake homes need

The older homes near downtown and along the lake still have original wood double-hung sash, often with exterior storm windows. Storms are the thing most cleaners either skip or charge a surprise fee for. They need to come off, get washed on both sides along with the primary glass behind them, and go back on the correct opening — they're rarely interchangeable, and a storm forced onto the wrong frame is how paint gets chipped and glazing gets cracked. Old glazing putty is brittle, and old wood sash doesn't forgive aggressive scraping, so this is careful work rather than fast work.

Lake proximity is the other half of it. Wind carries spray off the lake onto west and north-facing glass, and it dries leaving mineral deposits. Irrigation systems make it worse — a sprinkler head that clips a ground-floor window a few hundred times a season builds a hard water film that ordinary washing will not remove, because it isn't dirt sitting on the glass, it's mineral bonded to it. That takes a dedicated restoration process, and it's worth knowing the difference before you assume your windows are simply old.

Lake bugs are the third thing. Screens along the shore collect an astonishing amount of insect residue by August, and that residue is what's actually dimming the light coming through — not the glass.