At Fontenelle Window Cleaning, the crew takes its shoes off at the door
Two Bellevue cousins started a window cleaning company in 2023, and their customers write as much about how the young crew behaves indoors as about the glass.
Bellevue, NE
Wilson Arndt found one of his early customers outside with his dogs. Arndt introduced himself and asked whether the man wanted the window in his storm door and the transom over his front door cleaned, inside and out. The homeowner said yes. He usually did his own glass with Windex, he wrote afterward, and he could see that his efforts paled next to a professional cleaning.
Arndt runs Fontenelle Window Cleaning, which he started in Bellevue in 2023 with his cousin Ryler. The company was set up as a limited liability company that year, and its T-shirts carry the line “Est. 2023.” One of its first customers sized it up in a Google review: “It appears this upstart business is serious about developing themselves in a way that makes their mark in good customer service.”
Since then the two cousins have become a crew, and the work has spread across the Omaha metro, from Elkhorn and Valley in the west to Bellevue and Papillion in the south. The reviews have kept one theme from the start. Customers write about the glass, and they write just as often about how a crew of young men behaves inside their homes.
Customers tend to name the founders as a pair, Wilson and Ryler, and they often mention how young the crew is. They mean it as praise. Early on, one customer wrote that the cousins worked so hard that the neighbors commented on it.
Manners came up in the first weeks and never really stopped. One early customer wrote that the young man who came to the house was “conscientious of taking shoes off and careful around breakable stuff.” Another homeowner wrote that the crew took their shoes off at his entryway before going after the hard water spots his sprinkler system had left on the glass. One family wrote that Arndt kept their pets as undisturbed as possible; another, that the crew was careful with the household things in its way. Others noticed that he kept them posted on when he would arrive, including the times he ran late. One woman wrote that he rechecked each window for smudges.
The standard job reaches past the panes. Customers describe the crew doing screens, frames, tracks and sills, inside and out. Many of the jobs they remember are the hard ones. One woman owned an old two-story house with 35 old, multi-paned windows, and she had decided she needed new windows because she could never get these clean. Arndt got back to her quickly with a bid, and within a few days he and Ryler were at the house. They spent a day and a half on the windows and made some minor repairs along the way. She wrote that the windows looked brand new. “Definitely not the easiest job, but so glad we could get it done for you,” the company wrote in its reply.
Old houses keep turning up. A homeowner in Dundee, one of Omaha’s older neighborhoods, has a three-story house more than 100 years old with 40 windows. She wrote that Arndt knew that type of window, bid the job promptly and explained his process clearly. On two weeks’ notice he came before her deadline, moved through the house at his own pace and worked all day with only a break for lunch while the family stayed out of his way. After four years of wind, rain and dust, she wrote, the windows came out impeccable.
Then there are the odd problems. One customer has an atrium with curved glass set high up, which the crew handled without trouble. A landlord wrote that Arndt spent three hours on the windows of a rental unit. Customers say the crew has taken off glue that roofers left on a bathroom skylight and scrubbed mineral haze from windows in a house under remodel. At another house, a visitor who stopped by later that day thought the windows were open, the family wrote, because the glass and screens were so clean.
Sometimes the job turns up bad news. Arndt and the crew have pointed out windows with broken seals and other problems that no amount of cleaning would fix.
Gutter cleaning came early. The company’s website listed it beside residential and commercial window cleaning by 2024, and some of those calls came in a hurry. One homeowner had a leak from a clogged gutter; the crew was there at 7 a.m. the next morning. Another family wrote that the crew, while it was there for the gutters, also picked up branches a storm had brought down the day before. Later customers mention getting before-and-after photos of their gutters.
Some calls turn out smaller than expected. A renter who needed the gutters cleaned before moving out wrote that Arndt came within three business days, checked them and told him they were practically clean already. He cleared the one problem spot in about 10 minutes and did not charge.
Nebraska weather tests the work in other ways. One customer wrote that the company guaranteed its glass against rain-related dirt for a week after a cleaning. Another had her windows done the day before a blizzard. Arndt came back and did the outside again.
The Fontenelle name rides on the side of a white van with extension ladders on the roof rack. Reviews began naming crew members besides the cousins, Eli and Sam among them. When Arndt went looking for a field technician, he posted in an Omaha jobs group on Facebook and described both the job and the boss. The role was mostly cleaning windows, he wrote. “I am searching for someone who is funny, likes talking to people, and loves being outside,” he wrote. He did not ask for experience. “I currently work in the field and will train anyone, experience or not,” he wrote. “I like to think of myself as personable, funny, and understanding.”