Why It Usually Starts at the Bottom of the House
The kitchen in a house like this is at the back, often down a short flight of steps, with a door out to the side return and the garden beyond it. Food, warmth and the easiest way in from outside are therefore within a few feet of one another, which is why droppings in a lower-ground kitchen almost always come before anyone hears anything upstairs.
Larders, pantry cupboards and the space behind a range
An original larder, or a deep cupboard built into an alcove, is cool, dark and full of packets, and its back and sides meet old brickwork rather than a flat plastered wall. A range cooker gives the other classic spot: heavy, rarely pulled out, warm behind and holding whatever has been swept towards it. Mice behind kitchen units explains how to check that void without taking a kitchen apart.
Deep skirtings and original floorboards
Victorian skirtings are tall and were fixed to timber grounds nailed to the wall, so there is often a continuous gap behind them, and boards laid over joists a century ago seldom meet the wall neatly. A mouse using that gap crosses a room without ever stepping onto the floor, which is why droppings turn up in a line along one wall and nowhere else. Where mice nest indoors lists the spaces they settle in.
Working up a tall house floor by floor
What begins at garden level does not stay there. The holes cut for waste, heating and cables when bathrooms and kitchens were modernised run vertically through the floors, and boxed-in pipework in the corner of a room is frequently open where it meets the boards. Add chimney breasts with disused flues in them and the top of the house can be reached without going outdoors at all, which is how droppings end up in a wardrobe two floors above the kitchen. Whether mice reach a loft follows the same route to the top.
Where to Look in a House This Size
- Droppings the size of a grain of rice along the back edge of a larder shelf
- Nibbled corners on packets in a pantry cupboard, with spilled rice or oats behind them
- A line of droppings tight against the skirting of a hall or landing rather than out on the floor
- A musky smell in a cupboard built into an alcove beside a chimney breast
- Scratching above a ceiling or behind bathroom boxing once the house has gone quiet
The signs of mice describes them properly. Larger droppings, burrowing in the garden or heavier movement beneath a garden-level floor point to rat control in Queen’s Park instead.
Worth Doing Before Anyone Arrives
- Move dry food out of paper and card in the larder and into tins or hard tubs, pet food included
- Pull the cooker out if it comes forward easily, and sweep the floor and the wall behind it
- Sweep along the kickboards and wipe shelf edges each evening for a week
- Leave gaps open for the moment, because sealing one while mice are active can shut one inside a floor
- Keep poison away from a house with children, a cat or a dog in it
Around a Mouse Visit in NW6
When you book
Say whether the address is a whole house or a self-contained flat, how many floors are in use, whether the kitchen is at garden level, and which rooms have droppings in them. Mention a larder, a range, a converted loft or a garden studio with a kettle in it when you book mouse control, since each of those is somewhere to look.
Getting ready
Empty the larder and the cupboard under the sink, clear the floor of any room where droppings have appeared, and make sure a cellar door or loft hatch can be opened. Somewhere a mouse has actually been is worth more than somewhere tidied an hour beforehand.
Afterwards
You will be told what was found and what to do next. The time it takes depends on the size of the house and on how many floors are involved, as how long mouse treatment takes explains. Come back to us if droppings appear in a room that had none.
Keeping Mice Out of a Tall House
Two things decide whether they return: what there is to eat, and what there is to walk through. Sealed containers in the larder and a floor left clear at night deal with the first. For the second, the openings that matter are the ones the plumbing and heating made — where pipes drop through a floor, where boxing stops short of the boards, behind the kickboards of a fitted kitchen — and rodent proofing in Queen’s Park closes the small reachable ones for £180 for up to one hour. Mouse-proofing a property and why mice keep coming back cover the rest, and Mouse Control Brent the borough as a whole.
