Persian, oriental, wool and silk — washed by hand, repaired by hand.
Birmingham sits in Jones Valley with Red Mountain along one side of it and Shades Mountain beyond that, and both halves of that geography are hard on wool. Summers run hot and humid for months. Crawlspaces and lower levels stay damp through a fifty-six inch rainfall year. Spring pollen goes tacky and holds every bit of soil that lands on it. Rugs are collected, washed off site by hand, dried flat, and brought back.
A hand-knotted Tabriz and a polypropylene flatweave off a shelf are not the same object, and they should never meet the same brush. Vegetable dyes bleed. Silk scorches under heat. Cotton foundations shrink if they are pulled out of the wash wet and dried under tension. Guessing is how rugs get ruined.
So nothing gets cleaned until it has been looked over: fibre content, dye stability, weave construction, backing, previous repairs, and whatever a run of Alabama summers and wet winters has left 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.
Wool, silk, cotton, jute and synthetics each get their own water temperature, pH and agitation.
Chewed corners, unravelling fringe, moth grazing and split foundations rebuilt by hand.
The musty smell that comes back every wet week is treated in the foundation, not perfumed over.
We collect and return across Jefferson and Shelby counties. You never lift a roll.
Washing, structural repair, and getting water back out of a rug before it becomes a mould problem.
Full immersion hand-washing for Persian, oriental, wool, silk, cotton and modern synthetic rugs. Dry soil, pollen and clay 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 detailsFringe replacement, edge binding, moth damage, pet destruction, worn pile and missing corners. Reweaving is done with matched wool at matched knot density, so the repair settles into the field instead of announcing itself.
Repair servicesA failed water heater, a split supply line, a lower level that took water along one wall. 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 dry climate does not transfer here. Downtown sits at about six hundred feet on the floor of Jones Valley, with the ore seam of Red Mountain immediately to the south and Shades Mountain beyond it. July runs at a daily mean of eighty-one degrees, ninety is reached on roughly sixty-five days a year, and over fifty-six inches of rain arrives across the year. Wool is a sponge that happens to be beautiful. The damage builds quietly, then arrives all at once.
Most soaked rugs in Birmingham never met a creek. They met a water heater at the end of its life, a supply line behind a washing machine, a slow leak under a dishwasher, or a finished lower level that took water along one wall after a heavy week. The water is often clean when it starts and is rarely clean by the time it reaches the rug, because it has crossed a floor on the way.
What matters is what happens next. A wet wool foundation is a growing medium, and the warmer the room the faster that starts. 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 it should be photographed before any of that, because that is what an insurer will ask for.
Off-site washing, hand finishing, and a route that covers Jones Valley and both sides of the mountain.
From Jones Valley up over Red Mountain, along the crest of Shades Mountain, and east out along the Cahaba. Collection is included.
One hand-knotted Persian rug, photographed before and after cleaning.
Send the form and we will come back with a real number. Estimates are free and there is no obligation to book.
How rugs are actually built, how to tell hand-knotted from tufted in ten seconds, and what any of it means for a house in central Alabama.
Free estimate, collection and delivery included — anywhere on the route.
