You may be wondering why I am posting a picture of a piece of clean looking carpet that is lying on a driveway.  I wanted to shake things up a bit and post the after picture first in order to be well, dramatic.  This carpet has had about 6 months of use on it, and judging from this picture, one would have to agree that it looks like lightly used, yet clean looking carpet.  The story behind this carpet in a nutshell is that this is out of a rental town home in Alpine, Wyoming.  This rental had renters in it for about 6 months and these renters allowed some pets to totally trash the place.  There was cat and dog feces, urine, and vomit.  Not to mention the traffic areas that were ground into the fibers with greasy foot soils to boot!  Now that I have painted the picture of what it looked like, let me describe how it smelled.  When you walked into this town home rental, the smell was so pungent and sour that there was no mistaking that is was cat damage.  There were some doggy deposits too, but somehow cats really take the cake when it comes to pet odors in carpet.  It really took your breath away when you walked through the front door.  It is hard to describe the smell, but it was in the top three of nasty odors for me the first time I went in.

Here is another angle of this piece of pet damaged carpet.  Keep in mind that this carpet has only had about 6 months of use on it.  Now the obvious question is why is it out on the driveway?  This piece is out of the living/dining/hallway area on the main level.  The urine damage was so severe that the carpet padding was saturated and had to be thrown out.  We even took steps to seal the wooden sub-floor with a special pet barrier odor coating that is applied to the floor.  This barrier is the most effective product that I have found for blocking the smell of urine thus saving the additional cost of tearing out the wood.  It works better than KILZ, although that would be better than nothing at all.  I always tell our clients that have pet damage that if we can clean/restore the carpet at less than 65% of the cost of replacing it then it is cost-effective.  After measuring the place and doing the math, the client decided to let us try it.  I told her that if at anytime during this process we felt that it was a lost cause I would only charge her for the cost of the chemical and I would eat the labor.  With that in mind, I wanted to pull out all the stops on this one.  After inspecting the carpet and determining that it was sound structurally(meaning that the carpet material could withstand being put through the gauntlet), I decided that I would not just clean it in place, I washed it like it were a wool rug on a wash floor.  Since the pad and subfloor had to be taken out anyway, this is the method I chose.  Here is what the process basically looked like....

This was just the pics of the Living room carpet.  We performed the same process on the master bedroom carpet.  The rest of the house did not require new pad so we cleaned it in place like normal, but used the same chemical cocktail mentioned earlier.  Removing pet stains and odors from carpets is not a job for any old carpet cleaning company.  We are called Restore Your Carpet for a reason.  As long as there is sound material there to clean and it can make it through the gauntlet that we will put it through, we can Restore Your Carpet.

If you or anyone else you know is in need of our services regarding pet damage stains and odors, give us a call.

RYC, out.

Carpet cleaning/restoration services in Jackson Hole, WY
307.774.0223

Carpet cleaning/restoration services in Star Valley, WY
307.887.0223

Here at Restore Your Carpet, we are not just a carpet cleaning company.  We really, truly, are a full-service flooring company with answers and results.  We know how annoying it is to have to try to find multiple contractors when you have a problem with your carpet or other types of floor coverings.  This post is about solving a problem for a valued customer.  Read on...

Look at the lower right-hand portion of this photo.  You can see where a dividing wall that leads downstairs had a seam that for one reason or another has come undone. This carpet had a few things working against it. 
1) It was not properly maintained in regards to vacuuming.
2) This seam was placed next to a staircase.  The combination of these two things had cause the carpet to de-laminate from its latex backing.

In order to not cause any further damage to this carpet, I decided to steam-apart the seam in question with an iron and a wet towel so that I could see if it was possible to just stretch the carpet a little tighter and and re-seam it back together.  I did not know beforehand  what the condition was and my experience has taught me that until you know, take all necessary precautions. 

You can see here I am holding up the carpet from the carpet fibers and the latex backing is completely separated from the fibers.  This is called "Carpet backing delamination."  This happens often enough out there for a few reasons.
1) Over-wetting.
2) Pet damage.
3) Defective carpet.
Of course these are not the only reasons, just the most common.  In this case, who knows?  Either way, both sides of the original seam had delaminated to the point that I was actually surprised that it had held together as well as it had.

In order to make sure that I completely removed all of the damaged backing I trimmed this carpet back far enough to where I got a couple inched into the well structured latex carpet backing.  I of course used a straight edge to make the cut straight, then i applied seam sealer to all edges to ensure that the seam would hold and that there would not be a problem like this in the future.  Seal sealer is not a guarantee, just an important precaution. 

This is almost the finished product.  Of course you can see the patch because the carpet that I installed was new, and the carpet that was there previously was well worn from foot traffic and slightly faded from the sunlight that comes into the windows on the west. 

This is what the finished product looks like.  The carpet has been cleaned, groomed, and dried.  Now, the casual observer would say, that they could see the seam/patch, and I would of course agree.  However when you weigh the cost of replacing the carpet vs. a long-term repair solution, it really is not a question is it?  When I phoned the owner of this rental property to ask him if he could see the patch, he responded..."What patch?"  Which is satisfied customer talk for, I am happy with the job. 

If you or anyone else that you know is in need of a solution to your flooring problems, be they large or small, give Restore Your Carpet a call.  We have the answers for all your flooring needs.

This carpet repair was performed on Star Valley Ranch, Wyoming.

In Star Valley, Wyoming-307.887.0223
In Jackson Hole, Wyoming-307.774.0223
RYC, out.