i live with my g-parents and the rugs are disgusting, and they refuse to change them. is there a way to throughly clean them and attempt to restore them without replacing them? thanks!
Go rent a carpet cleaner and buy the largest bottle of carpet soap the store sells. Move all the furniture and clean the carpets according to the directions - it takes a long time but you save alot of money. Use hot water. Once you finish cleaning all the carpets once, go back and reshampoo until you have used up all the soap or else it is time to take the carpet machine back. Those machines work good but they require alot of soap and you have to change the water alot - it is hard, hard work.
when you say rugs i assume you mean throw rugs and not carpeting. throw rugs can be taken to the car wash and sprayed off then vacuumed there or with a shop vac. let them dry outside on a clothes line or over a fence. the high pressure soap, then high pressure rense does a great job of getting them clean. if carpet is the issue rent a machine or call a company that cleans carpet
Are they vacuumed regularly? You can take throw rugs to the laundrymat and wash them in those huge washers. If they're old and antique-like, the kind with fringe or the braided type they may have to be professionally cleaned, and yes, there are specific places that do it. (do any of the rugs have labels on the back with any kind of instructions??) Maybe your grandparents can't afford it or aren't physically able to do this. It's good of you to try and figure out how to do this for them. If you're talking about carpeting, like wall to wall, then the rented carpet cleaner is an option.
My mother's house had the original carpet, and she refused to change it while she was still living there. I used a Rug Doctor machine on it and that made a huge difference in how it looked. It took several days to do the job because we had to move the furniture, then use the machine, then wait for the rug to dry before moving the furniture back in. But it really made her rugs look so much nicer. There were still worn paths but it truly helped. You will need the machine, one or two bottles of the concentrated rug shampoo, the stain remover, and a traffic lane cleaner (all of which are sold at the Rug Doctor kiosk at the grocery store). If your grandparents have a dog or cat you may want to put in some concentrated flea killer in the wash water. Pre treat the traffic lanes and stains. Use VERY hot tap water in the tank with the shampoo and additives. After you shampoo the rugs, RINSE at least twice with clean hot water. You will be putting a lot of water in the rug and padding, most of which will be pulled back out by the shampoo machine. Use fans set on high to help dry the rugs. The problem with cleaning old rugs is there is a deep layer of packed in dirt at the root of the fibers on top of the backing. If you can borrow a Kirby vacuum cleaner to help break out some of that dirt it will help a lot. This is quite a big project and is a lot of work, but is a LOT cheaper than replacing the rugs. Hopefully you can get them to help you with moving the furniture.
If the rugs do not have a rubber backing on them, and are not braided rugs, you can run through the washing machine set on delicate. Hang to dry. If you can not run them through the wash, place them in the driveway. Put a small bit of laundry soap on them, use a brush to scrub them and then hose them off and hang to dry. If it is installed carpeting, then have them professionaly cleaned as a present for them
