My phone rang at 7 a.m. yesterday(Saturday) morning and as I looked at the caller id, I noticed that it was a local number, but not one of my regular customers which I have their names programmed into my contacts lists.  I knew that this could only be one thing....  An Emergency.  The voice on the other end said that they had a flood overnight due to an electricity issue and a faucet being left on and that they needed someone to come and pump out the water.  I was of course asleep, but I told her that I would be there within the hour and i hopped into my work truck and cruised on over to Fairview Wyoming which is is Star Valley and got right to work. 

When I arrived it did not look as bad as I had pictured in my mind.  When someone calls and says that they have had a flood, I always picture furniture floating around and water leaking from the ceiling everywhere.  With this job, I only experienced one of those scenarios. 

This flood cleanup in Fairview Wyoming was not the largest flood that we have cleaned up, but I was glad to do it in the summer.  Most of the floods that we get in Star Valley Wyoming happen in the winter due to pipes freezing and the weather here can easily get 10-20 below 0 and stay there for days.  For the customers sake, I would rather not have this happen at all, but If floods do occur, we are ready to respond rapidly to get the water extracted and get the place dried out.

RYC, out

Call us for your flood clean up needs
307.887.0223
in Star Valley
307.774.0223
In Jackson Hole Teton Valley areas

How old would you guess this couch is?  I received a phone call from the sweetest sounding lady the other day and she asked me if I knew where Felt, Idaho was.  I responded with a reluctant, "No...?"  Felt, Idaho, she explained further, is north of Tetonia in the Teton Valley, near Driggs and Victor.  I still had never heard of it.  But like the ambitious professional that I am striving to become, I of course told her that I am sure that it is near enough and I wanted to know how I could help her.  She said that she had a 125 year old couch that was hand made which has a silk covering and that she had a friend over and that her friend had spilled some red wine on the side, and she was curious to know if I thought that I could clean it.  Due to the nature of this call and the love of fine textiles that I possess, I told her that I was sure that something could be done about it and asked her if she could take some photos and send them to me.  A few days later in the mail I received a piece of the actual fabric that this was upholstered with as she had saved some of the material from what looked like forever ago.  I have rarely seen this type of silk but I was excited to take on this project regardless.

This is what it looked like when I arrived in northern Teton Valley to inspect the damage.  You can see the red wine stain where it ran down the side of the cushion.  There are numerous drops here and there and on the seat cushion as well.  She had attempted to clean it herself and created the yellowing stain as a result.  Anytime you have a natural fiber piece of cloth it is really important that it be dried very fast in order to prevent this yellowing from happening. 

This poor woman was practically in tears over this episode and after trying a few spotters that I had on my truck I was not able to even touch the red wine stains.  I remembered that I had a bottle of spotter that I was never able to remove anything with so I thought w-t-h and was surprised that it made them instantly vanish.  I would post here the name of the chemical, but what would the fun in that be? 

After working on these sections of the couch and thoroughly cleaning, scrubbing, extracting, and drying them, I had spent about 3 hours on the stained sections and the seat cushion.  I had a few other appointments to make in Jackson Hole so I informed the customer that I would be back in a few days to bring this couch back to my shop where I wash oriental area rugs and I would clean and restore the rest of the couch.  She was so happy with the sections that I cleaned that she asked me to take the matching chair with me.  So I did, and here are the results....

This was one of the most interesting and fun jobs that I have taken on, and from Felt, Idaho of all places.  I learned so much from this experience and would like to offer my services for cleaning and restoring antique furniture to anyone interested in the Star Valley, Swan Valley, Jackson Hole, or Teton Valley areas. 

RYC, out.

Restore Your Carpet
307.887.0223
in Star Valley
307.774.0223
In Jackson Hole

Does this hallway to the left look familiar?  This post is about traffic areas and how we clean traffic areas here at Restore Your Carpet.  You can see that this carpet was freshly vacuumed using our Sanitaire Commercial Vacuum prior to snapping this photo.  I received a call from a local customer that had clipped our ad out of the local paper and wanted to give us a try for the first time.  This job was ~700 SQ. FT of really nice, white frieze carpet, that had about 6 years of traffic on it.  This home has an asphalt driveway which is really popular in this part of the country.  Although this is a cheaper alternative to a concrete driveway, this can and will create the condition that if not properly maintained, could ruin your carpet.  Especially a white carpet like this one.  Luckily, this customer had a higher-end brand of carpet installed in their home.  If I had to guess, this was a Mohawk Frieze, probably the Beale Street line. 

I decided to use a different approach to cleaning this place than I have been doing lately.  I have been doing a lot of low moisture cleaning that I have been having some fun with, but due to the severity of these stains and the fact that I had not used my Rotovac 360 with my truckmount machine in a while I decided to perform the following steps:
1) Pre-vacuum all the carpet.
2) Pre-spray the really bad traffic areas with a special high alkaline mix that I will not divulge here.
3) Pre-spray the entire house with FLEX.  This is a Bridgepoint product that does really well with oily restaurant carpet.  I have had lots of success with this product in other residential jobs so I used it here too.
4) Agitate both pre-sprays with the bonnet attachment for my Rotovac 360 to really scrub it in to make sure that I "tried everything."
5) Steam/hot water extract all of the carpet with my Rotovac 360 and my Amtex truckmount machine.
6) Apply carpet protector to reduce the possibility of the severity of the asphalt soils from happening again.
The following are some more before shots as well as some after shots of this job...  Enjoy!

This job was performed on Star Valley Ranch, Wyoming.

If you or anyone you know has this kind of problem in the high traffic areas of your/their carpet, give us a call, we can Restore Your Carpet.

Star Valley, WY-307.887.0223
Jackson Hole, WY-307.774.0223

RYC, out.