Picture the rug under your kitchen table. Crumbs, chair legs scraping back and forth, a dog who sleeps on the corner, and a spilled glass of sweet tea nobody mentioned. It's been rolled up and shaken off the back porch a few times. It still looks tired.
We clean that rug right where it lies, on your floor, in your house. Nothing gets loaded into a van and you don't wait a week to get it back. Most rugs are dry within a few hours and go back under the table that afternoon.
Start with what the rug is made of
The first ten minutes decide how the rest goes. Your technician flips a corner, looks at the backing and the weave, and works out the fiber. Get this wrong and nothing else matters, because each material reacts to water and cleaning products in its own way:
- Wool takes a gentle, wool-safe approach and holds up well
- Silk is fragile and gets the lightest touch we have
- Nylon, polyester, and olefin are forgiving and clean up easily
- Cotton can shrink or bleed if it gets too wet
- Jute browns when it's soaked, so it gets the least moisture of all
We also test the dyes on a hidden spot. A rug that shows any color movement gets a different approach, or we stop and tell you. Some rugs, honestly, are better off with a full wash at a specialty shop, and if yours is one of them we'll say so and leave it alone.
Getting the grit out first
Rugs hold a surprising amount of dry soil. Sand and fine grit settle down into the base of the pile, and when that grit gets wet it turns to mud and grinds at the fibers. So before any cleaning solution comes out, we work the dry soil loose and pull it out. On a rug near a back door, this step alone can change how it looks.
On your floor, in your house
Next comes a pre-treatment for the trouble spots: traffic lanes, food, and any pet accidents. Then the carbonated clean. The bubbles lift dirt up out of the fibers so it can be extracted, and the rinse and suction that follow take the loosened soil with them. There's no soap, which means no sticky film to pull dirt back in next month.
Very little moisture goes into the rug, and that's what keeps the colors in place and the backing from getting soggy. If the rug sits on hardwood, we keep it drier still so nothing seeps through to the wood. At the end the pile gets groomed so it dries even, and we look the whole thing over with you before we pack up.
A word on pets and rugs
Area rugs are where a lot of pet accidents land, because they're the soft spot in a room full of hard floor. The odor usually comes out with an enzyme treatment that breaks down urine in the fibers and backing. Old stains are harder. Urine can permanently shift the dye after enough time, so a mark might fade a lot and still show faintly. You'll hear our honest guess before you pay anything.
Cost, and doing it with the carpet
There's a $25 rug coupon posted on the coupons page. Plenty of rugs sit in a room whose carpet is due anyway, and cleaning both in one trip saves you a second morning of moving furniture. The guarantee doesn't change for rugs: be 100% satisfied or pay nothing.
Tell us the rug's size and what it's made of, if you know, at 803-310-3848. Not sure of the fiber? Describe it on the contact page and we'll figure it out together.