A WELL-established oven cleaning specialist and domestic cleaning business is booming.

Oven Proud and House Proud domestics is an oven cleaning specialist and domestic and commercial cleaning service run by husband and wife James, 41, and 33-year-old Victoria Galston.

The Barrow couple started the business in March 2018 when James, who had been working as a chef in many different restaurants in the area since he was 16, wanted a change of career and Victoria, who was a cleaner for Lakeside, Newby Bridge, wanted to be self-employed.

Victoria said: “I started the cleaning business when I was cleaning for other businesses and thought that I could do this myself instead of for someone else.

“They were also such long evenings and I had a two-year-old at the time, so it was just more convenient for us as a family to look at our starting our own firm.

“So my auntie, who had her own cleaning business in Leeds, helped me with a business plan and I followed her advice.

“James is a chef so he has all the knowledge of the oven cleaning side, so it works really well.

“Now we have regular clients and it take at least four to six weeks for someone new to get booked in as we are constantly on the go.”

In September 2020, the couple’s business really took off, with many more customers getting in touch.

Victoria said: “We now work six days a week and have set days for oven cleaning and set days for regular cleans, just to be able to fit everyone in.

“We are just growing, and we have over 100 positive reviews on Facebook and everyone is amazed. A few people say to us that we aren’t going to be able to clean their oven and that they’d instead need to buy a new one, but they are always pleasantly shocked when we manage to get it looking new again.

“We took the plunge by going self-employed, but we’ve never looked back.”

Victoria said there is a growing demand for cleaning services in the area.

She said: “We’ve changed a lot since we first started.

“We now cover a wide area, from Bootle up to Witherslack and Hawkshead too.

“We just want to keep expanding, letting it grow naturally.

“We want to ideally keep the business between us two even if we were to take on one other person, as a lot of businesses who start of small and grow, the customers end up dealing with a middle person.

“We’ve had much positive feedback from our customers who have said they like that about us, that they deal with us and communicate just with us, so there is no miscommunication.”