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I shrink a wool rug.... On purpose!

9/9/2012

I was so swamped during the month of August that I did not have any time to blog. I did however manage to bring along my camera and snap some awesome pics that I will be blogging about today.

This picture taken in the twilight of an early morning is of a large 8x10 tufted, wool rug, probably purchased at Pottery Barn. The owner of this wool rug called me one day to ask if I knew how to shrink a rug back into form once it had a stretch in the middle. I answered of course in the affirmative because part of knowing how to do rugs right involves knowing how to do them wrong.

This rug was involved in a flood in a home and the contractor that cleaned up the water took it to his garage and put a few 5 gallon buckets underneath it to get it off the ground in order to dry it. Well in the meantime, the wool rug had stretched in a few places as you can see in the photo above.

Here is a closer shot of the stretch marks that this tufted wool rug had from the attempted drying technique of an inexperienced contractor.

Close up shot of the now REVIVED tufted wool rug.

This is a close up shot of the rug after we had a chance to fix all of the stretch marks before delivering it to our client. She was so happy that we were able to save it for her. In fact, her husband wanted her to just throw it out, but he was more excited than she was when we returned it.

If you or anyone else you know has any issues with any of your wool, silk, or any other kinds of rugs, give us a call, we have the answers you need.
RYC, out.

Oriental/area rug services in Jackson Hole, WY
307.774.0223
Oriental/area rug services in Star Valley, WY
307.887.0223

Intro to rugs, the RYC way...

6/18/2012

Hello net surfers,

This post about rugs is one of many to come. To make a long story short, I have always wanted to blog about my adventures out there as a carpet cleaning company business owner. I however have not found the time to do so, but I have so much fun doing what I do, that I thought I would do it anyway, just so I can check it off my list. These posts will not be in chronological order, but I will strive to add my personality into them, and give all of my fans, current customers, prospective customers, lost customers(be they few...), and/or any other category not named the opportunity to join me in the adventures that I embark on. Here goes...

Today we talk about rugs. Not carpet, Rugs. First of all, rugs should not be cleaned in the carpet cleaner sense of the word, they should be WASHED! Sorry to yell, but this is important. If a carpet cleaner shows up to your house, bids your wall-to-wall carpets and notices that oriental piece of artwork on your floor and attempts to add it to the bill, and says that he/she can clean it while they are at your house.... Do me a favor. Run in the opposite direction screaming and yelling as fast as you can. This is the rug washer snob coming out, so hold onto your shorts. If I were to get into all of the reasons in this post as to why the suggested reaction, it would never end, so I will just say read on...

The above picture is a shot that I snapped earlier today and to the silent/casual observer, one might ask, what is the white napkin doing there? A closer examination would reveal one of the many reasons your favorite carpet cleaner should not be allowed to clean your wool rug while at your home. This rug is owned by a nice young couple who shall remain unnamed. This massive rug weighs in at ~108 square feet. Its a big one, it is old, it is worn, and it is a bleeder. Look at the napkin above. Can you see the red lines? Here at RYC(Restore Your Carpet), we test each and every rug that we wash for colorfastness. That is a fancy way of saying, whether or not it will bleed. When I inspected the rug at the owners home, I noticed that some of the reds had bled prior to my inspection. How could this happen? Here are some possible reasons:
1) It was steam cleaned.
2) It was cleaned with carpet cleaner solution/soap.
3) The fibers were colored with too much dye in the first place.
4) Animal contamination(urine) saturated the fibers and cause the bleeding.
These are of course not all of the reasons for this to happen, just a few. Let's talk about a few of them. Heat, like steam cleaning heat, is not good for these types of rugs as a general cleaning practice. Wall-to-wall carpets are normally cleaned with solutions that are really high on the PH scale. They are mostly made of plastic, so that is not necessarily a bad thing. I won't get into the others in this post. I really just wanted to show some of the process that we utilize here to show to the world that we sort of know what we are doing when it comes to washing rugs. Rugs are an art form. They are art, therefore(in my twisted mind) they need an artist to care for them. This was not however the first step. I vacuum/vibrated this thing for about an hour prior to the colorfast test to get as much of the dirt out that I could. I pulled probably 1.5 quarts of dirt and dust out, I would have posted a picture, but I forgot to take one...oops.

Moving on...

The backing of the rug in question. My suspicions that it was a bleeder were confirmed when I performed the color test. This is how it looked upon the initial in-home inspection.

This is where I would normally insert the picture of me mixing up the dye-loc and pouring it over the rug in order to be certain that it would not bleed even more when I washed it. But alas, it is not here. So we will move on to the next step, which is the application of my super secret pre-soap dousing that I give to these textiles.

At this point, the rug is already completely saturated in the dye stabilizer solution so when it gets sprayed with solution #2, it foams up and causes the reaction that is noticeable in the next photo. Like my boots? I wash these rugs in what I call "The Wash Pit." There are many variations of wash pits. Mine is simple and not cool enough to brag about, but someday when I can brag about it, I'll be more descriptive.

Even though I vacuumed, and vacuumed, and vacuumed, this beauty released a lot of soil and who knows what else as I was saturating it and soaping it up, preparing it for the next step. I promise the water was clean when it came out of the hose.

Another angle of the particulates, and soils running out of the rug.

Scrubbing with the CRB(counter rotating brush). Look how much a good scrub brightened this baby up! That blue just pops out at you.

Back and forth, up and down, scrub, scrub, scrub. This is actually a hoot, and I would dare say this is a great time!

After a good scrubbing, I give the rugs a rinse to aid in the continued releasing of soils.

Another shot of the rinsing process. I only have so much time to fit all this in due to the amount of time that the dye-loc is effective. So while this is a long, meticulous process, it is also one where I am hustling to get it done so my chemicals are working properly.

This is a close-up shot of the layers of soil and the foam build up in the lower part of the wash pit. This is not to be confused with rug-blood which can sometimes appear in the foam.

The next step is to rinse/extract with Natural Fiber Cleaner. I like the Pros Choice brand. I got it in my eyes once and man oh man did it burn. I know there is some bite to their product. Here I am using my Rotovac 360 to apply the cleaner.

Ok, so I skipped a picture(again) of me doing some extraction and rinsing of the rug. Afterthought makes me wish I had taken one of how clean the water was when I rinsed it again. Here I am using my wand to vacuum out as much water as possible before it gets hung on the rack to get an air dry.

So after i extracted all of the water out that I was able to get out with my truckmount, I hung this rug up to dry with the fans for two days and....

Voila! Brighter blues, deeper reds, softer browns...

You can see some of the fiber loss in this one. I was reluctant at first to wash this rug, but we were really careful, and I cannot wait for the customer to see it.

And just for kicks, I performed a post-cleaning colorfast test, and its STILL a bleeder. Makes me feel lucky that it did not bleed on me while i was cleaning it.

This rug was cleaned at our shop in Star Valley, Wyoming for our valued customer in Teton Village which is near Jackson Hole, WY.

I hope that this post was entertaining and informative. If we can help you with your rug washing chores, give us a call at 307.887.0223 in Star Valley, or 307.774.0223 in the Jackson Hole area. Till next time.

RYC

I shrink a wool rug.... On purpose!

Intro to rugs, the RYC way...

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