Persian, oriental, wool and silk — washed by hand, repaired by hand.
Columbia is one of the hottest cities in South Carolina, and a rug here spends four months of the year in air it cannot dry in. Under most of these floors is a vented crawlspace. In March the pines let go and the pollen comes indoors on everything. Rugs are collected, washed off site by hand, dried flat, and brought back.
A hand-knotted Tabriz and a polypropylene flatweave off a warehouse shelf have almost nothing in common except a rectangular outline, and treating them alike is how rugs get destroyed. Plant dyes run. Silk scorches. A cotton foundation that is soaked and then dried under tension comes back several inches short. None of that is recoverable, and all of it starts with somebody guessing.
So nothing gets cleaned until it has been looked over: fibre content, dye stability, weave construction, backing, previous repairs, and whatever a run of Midlands summers has left down in the foundation. Only then does the rug get a method. That inspection costs nothing, it happens before you commit to anything, and if a rug is not worth the cost of cleaning we will say so.
Water temperature, pH and how hard the brush works all change with the fibre — wool, silk, cotton, jute or synthetic.
Open ends, grazed pile, chewed corners and split warps put back on the loom by hand.
The smell that shows up in a shut room every August is treated in the foundation, not perfumed over.
We collect and return across Richland and Lexington counties. You never lift a roll.
Hand washing, structural work on the loom, and pulling water out of a soaked rug before the foundation turns.
Full immersion hand-washing for Persian, oriental, wool, silk, cotton and modern synthetic rugs. Dry sand, clay and pollen come out before any water is introduced, then the rug is washed, flushed until the water runs clear, and dried flat under moving air.
Rug cleaning detailsNew fringe, rewrapped sides, moth grazing, pet damage, thin pile and corners that are simply gone. Wool is matched and knots are tied at the original density, so the mend disappears into the field rather than sitting on top of it.
Repair servicesA creek out of its banks, a thunderstorm the storm drains could not take, or a supply line behind a washing machine. Rugs in that state need flushing and controlled drying, not a fan pointed at them. We extract, decontaminate, dry flat, and document the condition throughout.
Water damage service
Rug care advice written for a cool, dry climate does not transfer here. Columbia sits at the fall line, where the Piedmont runs out into the Coastal Plain, at the point where the Broad and the Saluda meet and become the Congaree. Because the city is inland, low and built on sandy ground, it records some of the highest summer temperatures in the state: the average daily high is close to ninety-three degrees in July and ninety-one in August. Around forty-five inches of rain falls a year, and unlike a winter-wet climate the peak comes in the hot months, in afternoon thunderstorms.
A few of the soaked rugs in the Midlands met a creek. Most of them met a supply line behind a washing machine, a water heater at the end of its life, a slow drip under a dishwasher, or a downspout that put a thunderstorm into a crawlspace and then into the floor above it. Water that starts clean is rarely clean by the time it has been through a subfloor.
Creek and river water is its own category. It picks up whatever is on the lawns, driveways and roads it crosses, and along Gills Creek and the Congaree that is a documented local risk rather than a theoretical one. Either way, what matters is what happens next. A wet wool foundation is a growing medium and warmth speeds it up, which from May to September here means every room in the house. Drying the surface with a fan leaves the contamination in the base of the pile and produces a rug that seems fine for a few weeks and then does not. The rug has to be flushed, treated, and dried flat with the moisture content actually measured — and photographed before any of that, because that is what an insurer will ask for.
Off-site washing, hand finishing, and a route that runs from Cayce out to Chapin and north to Blythewood.
From Cayce and Lexington across the river through Shandon, Rosewood and Forest Acres, north to Blythewood and Lake Carolina, and west along the shoreline to Irmo and Chapin. Collection is included.
One hand-knotted Persian rug, photographed before and after cleaning.
Fill in the form and you get an actual figure back, not a range. Estimates cost nothing and commit you to nothing.
How rugs are actually built, how to tell hand-knotted from tufted in ten seconds, and what any of it means for a house at the fall line.
Free estimate, collection and delivery included — anywhere on the route.
