A fringe a robot vacuum has been pulling at for a year, insect grazing along the side that lives under the bed, a corner the puppy decided was a chew toy, or a rug that spent a night under a ceiling leak. Most of it is fixable by hand.
Rug repair is not patching. A proper repair rebuilds the rug the way it was originally made — foundation first, then pile, matched to the original knot density and dye lot — so the repaired section moves, wears and ages at the same rate as everything around it. Done well, you have to be told where it was.
That is slow work. Reweaving is measured in square inches, not square feet, and a hand on a loom is the only tool that does it properly. The upside is that damage most people assume is terminal usually is not. Rugs arrive folded around a hole and go home flat and whole.
Every repair starts with a free assessment and a straight verdict. If the cost of the work is out of proportion to what the rug is worth, we say so instead of taking the job.
From a short fringe tidy to rebuilding a foot of missing border.
Fringe is the end of the rug’s foundation, not decoration, so when it shreds the rug is unravelling. We secure the ends, rebuild lost warps, and replace or re-knot fringe to match the original — which is most of what a daily robot vacuum eventually pays for.
Side cords take the abuse from vacuum beaters and furniture legs. Once they split, the pile beside them starts letting go. Edges are rewrapped by hand in matched wool.
Burns, tears and worn-through areas are rebuilt knot by knot. The foundation goes back first, then the pile, matched in fibre, colour and density to the field around it.
Moth larvae eat wool from underneath, so by the time bare foundation shows there is usually an active problem. We treat the infestation, then reweave the grazed areas. The classic find here is the rug left in a house between one lease and the next — dark, still, undisturbed and warm is exactly the condition they want.
Chewed corners, clawed edges and urine-burnt dye. The rug is decontaminated first, then the missing structure is rebuilt and colour corrected where the original dye was destroyed.
Bleached bands under a warehouse window, bleach spots, the yellow-brown cast a rug picks up when it is over-wetted in place and dried too slowly, and dye that migrated during a soaking. Colour is rebuilt by hand where the fibre is still sound.
Rugs cut down to fit a room, or blocked back to square after years of buckling. Cut edges are properly finished so the rug reads as intentional rather than amputated.
Failed latex on hand-tufted rugs, brittle cotton warps in antiques, and rugs that ripple because the foundation gave way. Structure gets fixed before anything cosmetic.
A great many of the repairs we do could have been avoided by a decent pad. We fit breathable, non-adhesive pads sized to the rug — which matters most over sealed concrete in a loft or a newer building, where a solid rubber pad becomes a vapour barrier and holds everything the deck gives off against the foundation for months.
A braided washer hose upstairs, a water heater in a second-floor closet, a condensate drain that blocked in August, or a storm drain that could not take a summer downpour. The rug on that floor is now on a clock.
Wool survives being wet surprisingly well. What it does not survive is staying wet. In a warm room mould establishes in a saturated foundation in roughly forty-eight hours, and once it is at the base of the pile you cannot vacuum, spray or air-dry it back out. From April to October every room here is warm enough. Meanwhile unstable dyes start migrating, cotton foundations begin to rot, and whatever the water picked up on the way in is curing into the rug.
Where the water came from decides the method. Clean water straight off a supply line is one job; water that crossed a floor, ran through a ceiling cavity and came out of a light fitting is another one entirely, and it needs flushing rather than drying. In a stacked building the rug is frequently a floor below the failure and nobody found it on day one. A fan pointed at a wet rug is not restoration: it dries the surface, locks the contamination into the foundation, and produces a rug that smells fine for three weeks and then does not.
Send pictures of the damage, or we collect the rug at no charge anywhere on the Wake and Durham route.
The damage is mapped, materials identified, and you get a written price with options. No work starts without your approval.
Repairs go onto a clean rug. Working new wool into a dirty field leaves a visible patch a year later.
Wool selected by fibre, weight and dye lot against the original, and tested against the field before it goes in.
Foundation rebuilt, then pile knotted in at matching density, then sheared to the surrounding height.
Groomed, inspected against the intake photographs, and delivered back to your floor.
Free assessment on every repair, and a real answer about whether it is worth doing.
The six-stage hand wash every rug goes through, and why in-home wand cleaning goes wrong here.
Cleaning processSummer damp, spring pollen, porches, moves and empty houses — what rug owners here need to know.
Care notesCollection and delivery included across Wake and Durham counties.
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