Sean's Carpet Care

You can find hundreds of stain removal sites on the web.  Stains happen, and people need suggestions for the removal of those stains. With the advances in carpet construction, careful carpet care, and prompt attention to spills we can indeed remove most stains. However, even in a perfect world, some spills will leave a permanent stain on your carpet. Strong acids like battery acid or toilet bowl cleaners will damage a carpet as will strong bases like drain cleaner. Bleaches and certain dyes will permanently stain even the best carpet.  Some spills cleaned immediately would have come up but left unattended  can leave a permanent stain. You can find much on the web about the non-permanent problems but little about the permanent stain. What do you do with a permanent stain?

As a professional carpet cleaner, providing carpet cleaning in Portland, Oregon I like to give my customers and readers helpful information that can possibly save them thousands of dollars and improve their lives.  Browsing through some carpet sites the other day, I came across three words which just jumped out at me: “Dimish, Hide, and Repair Carpet Stains.” The author used these three words to describe possible actions for a permanent carpet stain.

• Diminish–Depending on the location of the stain, you can sometimes get enough of the stain out to yield it unnoticeable. Of course, you’ll always notice it, but visitors probably won’t. It’s not a perfect solution but much cheaper than replacing the whole carpet. If a stain involves a few strands, you can often diminish the stain’s appearance by snipping the offending strands.  You may not even be able to notice the missing fibers. If it is noticeable, you can snip fibers from a clean, scrap piece of carpet and glue them into the area where you removed the stained fibers. If you don’t have a scrap, then snip some strands from the back of a closet.
• Hide–A classic way of dealing with a stain is to hide it beneath a piece of furniture or a throw rug. Okay, it’s not an elegant way to deal with the problem, but it is less expensive than a new carpet. Changing the position of a light in the room or the intensity of light can help hide a permanent stain. In an emergency you could even sprinkle a little talcum powder over a stain to lighten it just enough to keep it from standing in stark contrast to the rest of your carpet.
• Repair– A professional carpet dyer may be able to restore a bleached area to a color near original. If you have several permanent stains, they may advise dyeing the whole carpet. Dyeing is a specialized art that require experience. I would not advise do-it-yourself dyeing in most cases. Carpet professionals can usually replace a damaged piece of carpet by cutting out the offending area and gluing in a new piece. You need to have a matching scrap that looks like the carpet on your floor.  You can’t replace a damaged spot with a new scrap on an old carpet even if the scape came from the original carpet.  They won’t match.

Hope this information is helpful. Until next time…Sean.

Once the rain clears carpet cleaning in Portland, Oregon begins! Spring has sprung. We get a little more light and a little more warmth. The windows fly open. A fresh breeze blows in, stale air blows out. The house breathes again. Like an age old ritual we look around us at the clutter accumulated through the long winter. Our hands itch to toss and clean. Something about spring brings out the spring cleaning in us.  The phone rings. Someone just decided to deep clean their carpet. Two minutes later someone else decided that they would like their black grout to look white again. I encourage people to get their carpets cleaned at the beginning of winter so as to enjoy a clean carpet all year; however, I understand the feeling. It just feels good to clean in spring.

• Deal with Clutter

I came across a link that has several good ideas for spring cleaning tips. This link has several other links to great ideas about organizing your spring cleaning. We tend to get a little spring fever with our spring cleaning and just plough into a room without forethought. All too soon we find ourselves in the midst of a heap of clutter with a lost feeling wondering how things got worse rather than better. Before one can get their carpet cleaned, you have to get rid of the clutter.  Sarah Aguirre of About.com had a good idea on her site.  She talked about four boxes to deal with clutter: (1) Trash (2) Give away/Sell (3) Storage and (4) Put away. I like that way of looking at possessions. You simply sort through your things and group them accordingly.  Try to deal with clutter in an organized way. It may take a couple weekends and garage sales to clear things out enough for the next step of serious cleaning.

• Deal with Air

I don’t need to tell you how to clean; however, I do want to mention some things that people often miss. Air moves through your house on a continual basis. If you have forced air, it moves through your furnace and vents. It goes under doors, through cracks between the wall and the floor, past filters, and out ventilating fans. All these air passages collect dust and pollen. People often get their carpet cleaned without cleaning the air passages. Before I come to clean your carpet, you might want to take a weekend to concentrate on these areas. Replace the filter in the furnace.  Blow out furnace duct work as best you can. Clean  the filter and fan over the stove. Vacuum out the bathroom fan and any other exhaust fans. Clean out the vent from the clothes drier. Rinse off your window screens. Get any opening where air comes into or out of the house.

• Deal with Surfaces

Once you have the clutter out of the way and the air cleaned, then you can deal with surfaces. Look at the walls. Do you want to paint or scrub? Wash down the windows. Wash the drapes. Dust the ceiling.  Take down light fixtures and wash them down. Dust the top of all surfaces. You have the vertical surfaces done and the high horizontal ones. Now look at your floors. Carpet manufacturers recommend at a minimum a yearly deep cleaning. Is this the time? At least get it on the calendar.

Hope this information is helpful. Until next time…Sean.

Grout got your goat. Grout has to dry before you can seal it, and sometimes installers don’t get back to a home for the sealing process. A few months later the homeowner gets a nasty surprise. Without proper sealing grout gets yucky quickly. Soap scum, black mold, and grease build up to ruin the appearance of an otherwise good looking tile floor, tub, shower, or counter. However, there is hope.

You can restore the beauty of your grout. In fact, you can even change its color. See the following link This Old Grout for a sample of the colors available. Grout stain goes by many different names such as: color sealing, grout colorant, grout dye, or grout paint. They all work about the same. Sealant companies simply add color to the grout sealant. You might assume then that by using a dark colored sealant that you could cover up yucky looking grout. Wrong! You can’t use grout stain on dirty, greasy grout. It won’t stick properly and the stains will show through. To get a good stain job, you still need to start with a dry, clean, sound grout surface.

Sealant companies didn’t create grout dye to cover up problems. They created it to give homeowners choice. After having the same tile for a number of years, you may decide that a change would look nice. However, you don’t necessarily want to replace all the tile. Grout colorant allows you to change things up a little without spending hundreds of dollars.

The actual staining is fairly simple. Apply a small amount of colored sealant to the grout. The sealant often comes in a tube. Squirt a manageable dab onto your grout. Work it into the grout with an old toothbrush. Cover all the grout surfaces completely. Try to keep the sealant off the tile. It’s going to take you a little time. I said it was simple not easy.  If you get some on the tile, it isn’t the end of the world. You can get it off.  Wipe the excess sealant off the tiles with a damp, not wet, rag. Let the grout dry for at least ten days before using the tile surface. Keep it dry in that time.

Have you ever painted your house? I have never figured it out why they call it painting. They should call it preparing. Ninety percent of the time you spend painting your house is really preparation time. You scrape, wash, sand, and prime. The actual painting takes very little time. It works the same way with grout coloring. You will spend more time preparing the grout than you will coloring it.

Actually, if your tile is really yucky, I would lean toward having someone prepare it for you. Many of the over-the-counter cleaners fail to remove ingrained mold and mildew buried deep in the grout’s pores. The old toothbrush only cleans the surface. Harsh cleaners can damage grout. I provide tile cleaning in Portland, Oregon. The equipment I have for carpet also works well on tile and grout. I use a jet stream of hot water and a special tool to clean grout. It takes out the mildew, grease, and soap residue without ruining the grout. It leaves a uniform surface for staining. Then I etch the grout with a mild acid to prepare it to take the color. I apply sealant too, but some homeowners want to do their own. That’s your call.

Hope this information is helpful. Until next time Sean.

Have you ever heard the term false economy. False economy is thinking that we are saving money when in fact we are in the long run losing it. The average homeowner gets their carpet deep cleaned every seven years in a vain attempt to “save money.” It’s a great example of false economy. By the time most homeowners get the carpet cleaned it has already undergone permanent damage. The dirt and sand cut and grind the fibers of the carpet. Foot traffic along with the sand wears a path right through your living room. Stains on the carpet get set permanently. Finally the homeowner breaks down and calls in a professional carpet cleaner. It’s usually too late. The homeowner looks down despondently. The cleaning did little to help the look. Often they blame the carpet cleaner.

At this point the homeowner starts looking for new carpet. Carpets represent one of the most expensive items in your home and the third most expensive thing we ever buy. People generally spend less on the upkeep of their carpet than on another expensive thing they own. I saw an interesting comparison on a carpet site. The article compares the cost of replacing a carpet every seven years versus cleaning it yearly and replacing it after thirteen years. Here’s the link Carpet Cleaning Prices.

It breaks down like this. Let’s say you buy a thousand square foot carpet for $2,500 and have it cleaned once at year six for $300 (a price of 30 cents per square foot). Finally at year seven you can’t stand it anymore and replace it for another $2,500. That’s $5,300 for seven years of carpeting.

Now lets say you buy a carpet for $2,500 and have it cleaned at 15 cents a square foot every year. Every year you pay $150.00 a year for carpet cleaning. After seven years you pay $1,050 for yearly cleaning. $2,500 + $1,050= $3,550 total cost over that seven years. And you still have another six years on your carpet.

Here’s the bottom line. It is false economy to put it off for six years. You will spend less in the long run to have your carpet cleaned every year. You probably noticed that I quoted a fifteen cent/square foot price on annual cleaning. You will find that if you sign up to get the carpet cleaned yearly you can get a better price out of most professional cleaners. Most professional cleaners have incentives to clean more often. I provide carpet cleaning in Portland, Oregon. I offer my customers referral deals, one free room cleaning, six month half-price incentive, and packages for annual cleaning.

You might consider some other factors here. Not only do you save money with annual cleaning, you also protect your health. Dust, food particles, hair, pet dander, and dead body cells fall into your carpet. Your vacuum sucks up most of it. However, some things stick to the fiber. Bacteria can grow. You do yourself a disservice to ignore an annual cleaning. It’s another example of false economy. Who costs more your professional carpet cleaner or your doctor?

Replacing your carpet every seven years also affects our environment. Yes, we now recycle carpet, but that costs energy, materials, and money. You can do much to save the environment by making your carpet last. Save some money, protect your health, and save the environment. It sounds like a Win, Win,Win.

Hope this information is helpful. Until next time….Sean.

Green clothes, green flowers, green shamrocks, and green beer, yes, it’s Saint Patrick’s Day 2012.  Wikipedia says that Saint Patrick’s Day is the most celebrated saint’s day on the calendar. I would guess they ruled out that other saint, Saint Nicholas, though associated with the Christmas holiday doesn’t actually get a day just for him. I like to look up information on holidays as they get close. I usually find out that I don’t know as much about the holiday as I thought. Did you know that they celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day in parts of Japan now?

Here’s another fun fact about Saint Patrick’s Day. The original color of the holiday wasn’t green but blue. The green part came because Saint Patrick often used the shamrock to explain the concept of trinity to his followers. Many people like to get out to a Irish pub on Saint Patrick’s Day for the full flavor of the holiday. However, those of us with jobs, kids, and responsibility the next day may choose a home-styled holiday with a few close friends.

You have the chips, dips, and the beer ready for coloring. Here’s a holiday tip that I’ll provide free of charge. If you start with a yellow, pale ale and add green food coloring, it will take a lot of green coloring to get a rich, green beer. You will also find that the beer turns your teeth green. Should you happen to spill that green beer on the carpet, it will take a lot of time and maybe green money to get it clean. Blue and yellow make green. Add blue food coloring to your yellow beer. It will take a lot less food coloring and will give you a nice green beer.

Now, why would I know how to make green beer? I’m not a cook or a bartender. Actually, I know about green beer because I provide carpet cleaning in Portland, Oregon.  What does one do when the green beer spills on the carpet? First, let me give you some good news. If you used blue as recommended, you will have a far easier time of cleaning just because you have less food coloring.  I have even more good news. Food coloring breaks down easily in acidic liquids. Beer is acidic on the pH scale. The beer starts the cleaning for you even though it can leave a sour smell behind.

 Wilton Food Dye has published a blog about removing food coloring. They should know right? I recommend a quick read of the link. Blot up the spill with clean white rags. Don’t scrub. The beer should break down the dye. If not, use a little vinegar, lemon juice, or more beer to break the dye. Most of the color should have come out by now. The article recommends a wet spotter. If you haven’t made up a wet spotter in advance, then just use a mild soap in warm water.

It’s important to get the stain out while its still wet. If it didn’t all come out, cover it with a absorbent like borax or baking soda. Put a plastic sheet over the spill and weigh it down with a book. You can check it again in the morning. It will probably go away with the absorbent. If not, make the wet spotter and have another go. It should come out. If not, contact a professional carpet cleaner before your carpet is damaged.

Hope this information is helpful. Until next time….Sean

The other day I gave my readers a warning about viscose rugs. I provide rug cleaning in Portland and woke up this morning thinking that I should maybe tell you a little more about the history of viscose and how it impacts you as a consumer. For textile manufacturers the viscose story was a regular Rumpelstiltskin tale of turning straw into gold. Except in this tale they turned straw into silk. An English chemist by the name of Charles Cross figured out a way to change plant fibers (cellulose) into a silk-like thread. The textile world rejoiced.

Silk production depends on the lowly silkworm for its success—a process where in the end the worm dies. As you might imagine it takes many a silkworm working around the clock to produce a shirt. This labor intensive process relying on thousands of living insects producing a protein excretion in their march toward death is a risky and expensive process. Manufacturers welcomed a less expensive, more reliable way to make fabric.

Charles Cross called the new miracle “viscose” because of the viscose texture of the cellulose fibers after their bath in carbon disulfide. In England it has gone by the viscose name ever since. American retailers didn’t like the idea of calling a fabric viscose or sticky and renamed it rayon in 1924. Rayon replaced silk in bedding, clothes, diapers, towels, and even yarn. Rayon (viscose) has many desirable qualities. With a little tweaking it can imitate the properties of silk, wool, linen, and cotton. It has largely replaced not only silk but cotton—another bug-produced textile. Cool, comfortable, and easily dyed it became the major material of Hawaiian shirts in the 50′s.

Of course, nothing is perfect. Viscose has some undesirable qualities too. As a plant fiber it easily breaks down in the presence of water. In fact, it breaks down in the presence of feet too. Viscose doesn’t have the tensile strength to handle flexing, bending, or people walking on it. When used in a blend with other more durable fabrics, viscose has worked well for the clothing industry. In a blend the other fabrics make up for the inherent weakness of the rayon.

The problem comes when you try to use viscose alone. It has the shiny appearance of silk and in appearance can easily pass as silk, but that’s where the comparison ends. It looks shiny like silk but doesn’t act like silk. It turns out that the silkworm knows its business and produces a thread thousands of times more durable than viscose. Making a rug out of viscose is asking for disaster. About all you can say for them is that they are cheap in every sense of the word.

With so much negativity in the world I really try to keep my posts positive. I try to emphasize solutions to problems not the problems themselves. So what do you do if you happen to have a viscose rug?

• Understand that you need to keep the rug dry as possible even when cleaning.
• If your viscose rug has sentimental value, dry clean it.
• Otherwise, take it outside and shake it or vacuum it with a canister vacuum.
• Keep the rug in an area without traffic or use it as a wall hanging.
• Don’t put it over an expensive carpet. Viscose rugs tends to bleed colors easily. Learn Why Rugs Bleed

Here’s a link to an article that you might want to bookmark for future viscose reference How to Clean a Viscose Rug.

Hope this information is helpful. Until next time…Sean.

Everyday, I provide pet urine odor removal as part of my business providing Carpet Cleaning in Portland. I have never met anyone who is happy about having pet urine odor or pet diarrhea on their carpet. I understand that pet urine odor removal can be difficult at best. The truth…Many professional carpet cleaners have trouble removing pet urine odor from carpet. When comparing pet urine odor removal to pet diarrhea removal from carpet the diarrhea is much easier.

The are many reasons as to why pet urine is difficult to remove from carpet. Besides the problem with pet urine removal is trying to stop dogs from peeing on the carpet. First, it is a good idea to have a professional experienced carpet cleaner remove the pet urine odor. It is important to hire a carpet cleaner that can flush out the carpet pad. The majority of the trouble making urine is in the carpet pad. Click the video below to see what needs to be removed:

Pet Urine Removal Portland

Stop Dog Diarrhea

If you have a dog that has issues with diarrhea then it is important to stop them from having accidents on the carpet. Removing diarrhea from carpet is fairly simple. Really, you need to remove the solid waste with a towel. Then you need to blot up the rest of the diarrhea with a wet towel.

Now, that you have the diarrhea treated and removed from the carpet you need to help the dog. Different species of dogs can have specific issues with diarrhea. German Shepherds are dogs that can have issues with diarrhea. A good article that explains how a proper diet for your dog can stop diarrhea: Dealing with Loose Stools in German Shepherds

While the article above focuses on German Shepherds it also does an excellent job shedding light on the connection between diet and diarrhea in dogs.

Hope this information is helpful! Thanks….Sean

I like the do it yourself (DYI) stuff on the Internet. There are some great options for Do it Yourself Carpet Cleaning on How to Sites, blogs, and  You Tube. When I see this information it brings out the mad scientist in me. When I mix something to use in my business Carpet Cleaning in Portland that works well and costs many times less than the commercial product, it makes me feel like I got away with something—like I beat the system or something. Am I the only one? The Internet has made DYI into an art form. You can find a DYI article or video on just about any topic.

If you keep up with my posts, you know that I have written a lot about stain removal for the Do It Yourselfer. I took formal training for my job; however, when I write, I like to see what other’s have said. I read the DYI sites on stain removal. There’s some interesting stuff out there. Let me leave it at that.

I read a DYI cleaning site today about which I wanted to comment. Take a look Vinegar the (almost) Only Cleaner You’ll Ever Need. Many of the DYI sites mention vinegar as a good cleaning agent for carpet. Vinegar is a weak acid. It can remove many odors. It also neutralizes soap that you might have used previously and will help with the residue problem. However, to claim that vinegar is the almost do all cleaner is a bit of stretch for me. Using vinegar on the wrong surface could lead to trouble

Think about all the things that can get on your carpet: gum, grease, blood, wine, milk, vomit, coffee, soda pop, red food coloring, beer, or pet urine odor. To expect any one cleaner to remove all those things  is expecting too much. It takes soap to dissolve petroleum based products. Natural red food coloring found in some many of our products require an alkaline solution to remove them. Vinegar is acidic. Some cleaners, including vinegar, can actually set a stain when used in the wrong way or at the wrong time. My common sense and my experience tells me that no one product can clean everything.

Having said that, should you avoid DYI cleaning products? No, I wouldn’t go that far. It’s fun and sometimes profitable to experiment in a mad scientist sort of way. However, I suggest to my customers that they experiment on a scrap piece of carpet. DYI products can ruin your carpet as fast as any commercial product. Test any products you make to see if they take the color out of carpet. See if they remove the stain.

Use common sense. Anyone claiming that a single product can clean anything is probably breathing too much of that product. If you want to write about a product that cleans like no other, then pick water. Water dissolves more things than any other liquid. Hey, if you can sell it, you could make some real money.

Be careful about mixing things. Don’t mix ammonia and bleach. It makes chlorine gas. Just because they call it natural doesn’t mean it is safe. Ammonia is quite dangerous. If your child or pet drinks it, it will require a trip to the emergency room. So have fun. Be careful. Take safety and carpet precautions.

Hope this information is helpful.  Until next time….Sean.

Have you ever watched people vacuum their carpet? Have you ever watched yourself vacuum? Most people vacuum like the house is on fire, and they have to get done before the roof caves in on them. The lowly vacuum cleaner ranks as one of the world’s most amazing machines, but it has its limits. You really can’t run the thing at mach speed over your carpet and expect that it will adequately clean. As a professional carpet cleaner providing Carpet Cleaning in Camas WA let me tell you some things I have seen and some suggestions for proper vacuuming tips.

• Clean Your machine before you clean your carpet. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen trying to clean their carpet with a full vacuum bag. You can’t do it. A good cleaning job depends on your machine’s ability to develop a good vacuum. Air has to flow through a vacuum for it to work. A full bag stops that air flow. I know that your bag probably has a line on it that tells you when to change it. I recommend that people change it long before you hit the line. Your vacuum is still cleaning,  but the power goes down something terrible the closer you get to that line. Bags cost a lot less than new carpets.
• Check the drive belt and the brushes. The drive  belt on a vacuum takes a terrific beating. Paper clips, button, and pennies wreak havoc on the drive belt of a vacuum. When the belts gets beat and loose, it loses vacuum. The brushes and beater bar can no longer do its job. The vacuum is no longer the machine it wants to be for you.
• Check the vacuum height. Most people set their machine too high or too low. Too high and the brushes and beater bar don’t lift the dirt for the vacuum. Too low and it slows the machine revolutions, vacuum, and lifting ability. I like to adjust it so you can just feel the carpet vibrate.
• Now take a deep breath. Vacuum the carpet slowly. I read somewhere that it can take four passes to pick up all the dirt in your carpet. Overlap your passes at least half. Go over the area slowly. Go over it several times. Take your time. Don’t wait until company is about to arrive before you vacuum the carpet.
• Vacuum the carpet a couple times a week at a minimum. Most people don’t vacuum enough. Look at that vacuum bag. See how much dirt goes into that paper bag. That’s a lot of dirt. The longer that dirt stays on your carpet the more damage it does. It literally cuts your carpet.

Another year has passed! Ok, I may be a little announcing that it is a new year, but hey it is still January 2012. Last year I received the Super Service Award from Angie’s List. This year I was honored to win the Angie’s List 2011 Super Service Award Portland Oregon

I want to thank all of my great clients and Angie’s List! It has been a long year and felt great at adding new clients. It is always fun to see my repeat clients, providing Carpet Cleaning in Portland.

Thank you!

Sean

Super Service Award 2011

Sean’s Carpet Care, 1631 NE Broadway St. #318, Portland, OR 97232