Rug Cleaning in Historic Oakwood
Collection and delivery in Historic Oakwood are included. We take the rug back to the workshop, wash it properly, and bring it home.
What Historic Oakwood is built from
Raleigh's largest intact Victorian neighbourhood, east of the Capitol between Person Street and Oakwood Cemetery, listed on the National Register in 1974. Second Empire, Queen Anne and Italianate houses from the 1870s onward: high ceilings, lime plaster on lath, wide pine boards, and two or three chimneys apiece.
Restorers, and a great deal of work permanently in progress. Houses here are usually being taken back toward something after a century of being adapted, and there is very often a good rug in the next room while that happens.
The Historic Oakwood problem
Renovation dust in a house this old is chemically different from ordinary dust, which is what catches people out. Old plaster is lime-based, so what it throws is strongly alkaline, and wool is a protein fibre that wants to sit slightly acid — alkaline fines sitting at the base of the pile dull the dyes and rough up the fibre surface long before anybody registers the rug as grey. The other one is soot. These houses were heated by coal and wood for their first fifty years, and opening a boarded-up flue or lighting a chimney nobody has swept releases a very fine oily carbon that behaves nothing like grit: it will not shake out, it bonds to the fibre, and vacuuming distributes it. Both are far more recoverable in the first month than after a year underfoot. The practical move during any work is to get the rugs out of the house rather than rolled in the room next door, because a rolled rug is not a protected rug — dust goes straight in at both open ends and settles into the middle of the roll.
If that sounds like your rug, send the form and describe what you are seeing. We will tell you whether it needs the full treatment or not.
We collect from these too
Ready when you are, Historic Oakwood
Free inspection, free collection, and a real number before anything starts.