Mobile Detailing
in Granite Falls, WA

Granite Falls is where SR-92 ends and the Mountain Loop Highway begins, so everything heading up into the mountains comes through here: hikers, hunters, campers and the gravel trucks. From Snohomish it's a straight run for me, up 9 and out 92 past Lake Stevens.

I'm Mikey. I'm in Granite Falls most weeks, I bring everything I need to your driveway except the water and the power. Using your spigot and outlet is how I keep the price down, and it's the same price here as it is in Snohomish. No travel fee. It's just me, so the person who quotes your car is the person who details it.

Up the Loop are the trailheads people drive in from all over the county for: Lake 22, Mount Pilchuck, the Big Four Ice Caves. Hikers drive it all summer, and plenty of them live right here. That means boots. Trail mud is fine and gray, and once it's ground into carpet a vacuum only gets the top of it. One tip that saves a lot of scrubbing: let it dry before you go at it. Dry mud vacuums out. Wet mud smears deeper. After that, the carpet gets extracted so the stain and the smell leave together.

Past Barlow Pass the highway turns into miles of gravel before it's paved again toward Darrington. Do the whole loop on a dry August day and the car comes home the color of the road, with dust packed into the door jambs, the seams around the hatch and the weatherstrip. Jambs are part of every detail I do, not an add-on. The front end comes home with a summer of bugs on it, too, and bug splatter is acidic. On hot paint it can etch the clear coat if it sits for a few weeks, so the sooner it comes off, the less it costs.

Then there are the quarries. Rock and gravel trucks run out of the hills around town (Quarry Road opened around the north side in 2010 to take them out of downtown), and anybody who commutes on 92 behind one knows the sound of a stone hitting the windshield. Here's the honest part about rock chips: a chip is missing paint, and polishing can't put paint back. It needs touch-up paint. What polishing does fix is the haze, swirls and light scratches around it. When I see the car, I'll tell you which marks are which before you spend anything on them (or do the fingernail test yourself).

Winter is its own season up here. When it snows, sand and deicer go down on 92, and both get sprayed along the lower doors and up into the wheel wells. Deicer left on all winter is worth washing off, especially on an older truck where the paint is already tired.

And half the trucks in town have a dog that goes on every hike. Wet dog hair weaves into carpet and cloth seats and brings the smell with it. Getting it out is extraction and a lot of patient work with a rubber brush, closer to 2–4 hours than 90 minutes, and I'll tell you that when I quote it, not after.

I work weekday afternoons and Saturdays. You don't need to be home: leave the keys, tell me where the spigot and outlet are, and the car's done when you get back.