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Question:

how to get paint off carpet?

my son just spilled 18 litres of paint on his bedroom carpet - I have scooped up what I can but there is obviously a massive paint puddle on the carpet - it is emulsion (non-oil based) - and suggestions?

Answer:

Do you have a wet vac? I'm not sure what emulsion is but if it is latex (water based) To get all the paint out of the carpet you need to keep soaking it with water if latex and keep sopping it up. You need 2-3 buckets of water and keep doing this until you see almost no paint color in your dirty water. Suck up all the excess water with the wet vac and put a fan or 2 on it to dry. I would even recommend pulling up the carpet and vacuuming the pad if it is wall to wall. This will also help the air get at the pad and dry it faster. If the paint is dry you should just throw out the carpet.
You can try vinegar, that is what people use to get wine up. The best would be paint thinner but it would probably bleach the carpet.
Call the 800 number on the package. I'm thinking just pick up the carpet and replace it. 18 freeking liters of paint OMG!
First, call the manufacturer of the paint. There should be a number on the can itself. They may be able to recommend a better idea than I'm about to. But I suspect they'll tell you what I'm about to say. So long as the paint is still wet, and it is water-based paint, you can clean it up with soap and water. To know if it's water based paint, look on the label. Under clean up it should say water, or soap and warm water or similar. The thing is, you don't want to soak the carpet, so don't just dump soapy water on it. Instead, get a bucket full of soapy water, and a sponge, and dip the sponge into the water, then use it to remove some paint. Repeat, getting new soapy water as needed. Actually, your son needs to be cleaning this, under your supervision. So get him going. This is going to be a lot of work, because that is a huge amount of paint. How in the world did he spill that much? Why did he even have that much open at once? His spill - he needs to do the clean up. If you have the cash, the easiest thing is to rip out the carpet and get new.

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