We detail the car where it sits

What the detail covers, inside and out

A mobile detail here means the car stays where it's parked and the work comes to it. We start outside, wheels and tires first so brake dust and road grit come off before anything touches the paint, then the body from the roof down. After that everything comes out of the inside and the carpet gets vacuumed and brushed. Glass is done last, so nothing lands back on it. You get the car back ready to drive. Nothing left half apart in your own driveway.

How deep it goes depends on what the car's been through. A commuter that lives in a garage and runs to Murfreesboro and back needs a wash and a good dry. The inside of that one is a wipe down. A truck parked under a big oak all summer, or one that sat on a job site off a gravel drive in Smyrna, needs sap worked off the paint first, and a lot more time on the carpet. Same steps either way. Different amount of hands on each one.

We look at the car before anything gets wet and tell you what we see. Scratches that'll still be there afterward. A stain in the carpet that's been sitting long enough to be permanent. A wash makes paint look as good as the paint is, it doesn't make old damage disappear, and anybody telling you different is selling you something. You'll know what's coming off and what's staying before a bucket comes out of the truck.

• Wheels and tires cleaned before the paint
• Washed from the roof down, clean rinse water
• Dried with towels, never left to air dry
• Mats pulled out and cleaned off the car
• Door jambs wiped, glass done last

Why washing order decides the finish

Most of the fine scratching you see on a hood in direct sun didn't come from a rock. It came from a wash. Grit rinses off the car, drops into the bucket, gets picked back up in the mitt, and then gets dragged across the clear coat on the next panel. That's why the wheels get their own water and their own brushes, and why the mitt goes back into clean rinse water between panels instead of straight back onto the car.

Heat is the other thing working against you here. On a July afternoon a driveway in a new subdivision with no trees on the lot will run hot enough that soap dries on the panel before you can rinse it, and that leaves a spotted film that has to be washed off again. Middle Tennessee water is hard, so those spots are minerals sitting on the surface, and if they bake in long enough they etch. We wash in sections and in shade where the yard gives us any.

Drying matters as much as washing. Letting a car air dry in this humidity is how you end up with the same water spots you just spent an hour rinsing away, so the car gets dried with towels, panel by panel, including the mirrors and the gaps where water hides and runs back out later. Door jambs get opened and wiped too. Skip the jambs and the first hard turn out of the driveway sends dirty water streaking down a door you just cleaned.

What a Tennessee summer does inside

The inside of a car in this climate is a damp box sitting in the sun. Everything that comes in on shoes, red clay off a new build lot, grass clippings, mulch, gets ground into the carpet and then steams every afternoon. Mats come out first and get cleaned away from the car, because vacuuming around a mat just moves the dirt under it. Then the carpet gets brushed to lift what the vacuum can't pull on its own, and vacuumed again after.

Damp is what turns a dirty interior into a smelly one. A mat that goes back in wet, or a spill nobody got to the bottom of, will sour fast in August with the windows up and the car closed. So mats go back dry, and the doors stay open while the inside finishes. Seats get worked with as little water as the job allows. If a smell has soaked into the padding under the carpet, we tell you that instead of spraying something over it.

Glass goes last for a reason. Dash and door panels get wiped before the windows do, because whatever is used on plastic and vinyl throws a film onto glass, and you won't see it until the sun hits the windshield at the wrong angle on the way to work. Cleaned in the right order, the inside of the windshield is clear at night, which is the part most people notice a week later when they're driving home in the rain.

Working off your driveway

Mobile means we work with what the property has. A spigot on the side of the house and a place to park out of the way covers most of it. Newer homes in the subdivisions around Smyrna usually have a wide concrete drive and an outside tap on the back corner, which is easy. Older lots can be tighter, with a narrow drive under a tree and a hose bib that hasn't been turned on since last summer, so it's worth checking that it runs before we get there.

Shade beats sun every time, so where the car sits matters more than people expect. Under a carport, or on the shaded side of the house, gives a better result than the middle of a bare driveway at noon. On a new build with nothing planted on the lot yet, the early part of the day is the only shade there is, and that's usually when we're already out doing lawn work in the neighborhood.

Wash water runs downhill and ends up somewhere, which is worth thinking about on a lot that slopes to a storm drain or straight into a bed we just mulched. We keep the runoff off fresh beds and away from anything freshly planted, and we sweep the drive down when the car is done so there's no grit or soap film left drying on the concrete. The point is that you get a clean car and a driveway that looks the way it did before we pulled in.

Booked alongside the lawn visit

Most of this work happens on a day we're already at the house for the yard. The truck is already there and the car is sitting in the driveway doing nothing while the mowing gets done. Getting both handled on one visit is the whole reason people ask for it, and it saves you a trip to a bay somewhere on a Saturday. If you want it done on its own without any yard work, that's fine too.

People who have us out for the yard often ask about the car once they see what comes off a driveway. Ilesha Mae put it plainly in a Google review: "Very impressive work. I use Green & Thingz for lawn care, pressure washing, and mobile detailing. Mr. Green is very professional and puts quality above everything!" The car gets the same attention the beds and the edges get, because there's no reason to offer it otherwise.

Scheduling is a phone call. Hours run Monday to Sunday, 12:00 AM to 12:00 PM, so a morning slot is the norm, which lines up with the cooler end of the day anyway. Tell us what the car is and whether the inside needs real work or a tidy up, and we'll tell you what we'd do to it. The more you tell us up front, the closer that answer will be. Call (615) 987-9982.