How we clean Hawthorne
The aerospace tracts define this city. Ramona, Bodger Park and the streets around Jim Thorpe Park are rows of 1,000 to 1,400 square foot houses put up quickly in the postwar years, single story, stucco, with a driveway down one side and a small square of yard behind. Hollyglen, west of the freeway, has slightly larger versions of the same idea and more of them have been remodeled.
Layered on top is a lot of newer density. Three- and four-story apartment buildings and podium condos have filled in along the main corridors and near the Green Line, and those units come with subterranean parking, a fob-controlled lobby and hard flooring throughout. A crew working here in one day may go from a 1952 tract house with original casement windows to a 2019 condo with a keypad and a loading zone, so we ask about access up front.
Hawthorne homes, structurally
The postwar house here runs 1,000 to 1,500 square feet on one level with a slab foundation, no basement and no interior stairs, which keeps a standard visit short. Kitchens are small and often original. The newer condo stock is the opposite: two levels, laminate or engineered wood wall to wall, a compact bathroom stack, and a balcony that collects the same airborne grit as the older houses. Aluminum window tracks are the recurring problem in both.