Rug Cleaning in Avondale
Collection and delivery in Avondale are included. We take the rug back to the workshop, wash it properly, and bring it home.
What Avondale is built from
Platted in the mid-1920s on the east bank of the river and built out fast: brick and stucco Tudor Revival, Colonial Revival and bungalow stock along St. Johns Avenue and the streets running down to the water, most of it up before 1935. Rooms are small by modern standards and rarely square, because fireplaces, bay windows, built-in bookcases and stair returns all eat into them.
Long-tenured owners, a strong preservation streak, and a steady trade in good rugs through the shops and estate sales along the avenue. Most of these houses have had four or five owners, and a fair number of the rugs came with the house rather than with the current family.
The Avondale problem
The rugs here have very often been altered, and that is the thing that decides what can be done with them. A 1920s room with a chimney breast on one wall and a bay on another does not accept a standard nine-by-twelve, so somewhere in the past thirty years a great many rugs in this neighborhood were simply made smaller — cut down along one edge, or cut in two and the better half kept, then rebound to hide it. A cut edge is an unsecured edge. The wefts that hold the knot rows together end in mid-air, and the only thing stopping the rug unravelling from that line is whatever binding was stitched over the top, usually machine-serged in a hurry and rarely stitched deep enough into the foundation to carry the load. It holds for years and then goes all at once, and the failure runs along the cut rather than staying local. The tell is a border that stops mid-motif or does not go all the way round, or a rug whose four sides do not match. Anything of that shape gets looked at from the back before it is washed, because a rebound edge that is already loose will open in the water if it is not secured first.
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.
Ready when you are, Avondale
Free inspection, free collection, and a real number before anything starts.