Quick call your travel agent!

Better yet just take a deep breath. There are 3 things I want you to do. That’s it just 3.

1. Take another deep breath. Panic is the mind killer, stay calm and it will all turn out ok.
2. Take a wet towel and drape it over the spill. I know you will feel compelled to try to mop it up or try to remedy the problem your self, but in my experience most of the time this is just making matters worse. The wet towel will keep the paint from drying. This is what is important! Once the paint is dry it will be very difficult to remove from your carpet.
3. Call a professional. Even the biggest spills can be cleaned up through hot water extraction if the paint is still wet.

That’s about it. I am sure a wet dry vac might help but at the end of the day I feel that your best bet is to call a carpet cleaning company that has dealt with this situation before.

I had an experience where a lady was painting her living room and her dog bumped into the step ladder where the gallon of paint was. The dog knocked it over spilling the entire gallon and the proceeded to walk, repeatedly, through it! Well she was not very happy with the little dog but the paint did come out through hot water carpet cleaning.

Until next time

Jay

Does  your carpet need re stretching? This a common occurrence. Carpet has a tendency to relax over it’s life time, so as an installer you want to stretch the carpet past that point of relaxation. This way your carpet will stay nice and tight through out its life span. Many time carpet installers are in a hurry and fail to go the extra step to ensure that the carpet is tight enough to stay looking great after it relaxes.

Another possibility is that the home owner will pull or drag heavy furniture over their carpet. This will warp the carpet and give it a very similar look to carpet that needs to be stretched. Either way I can help remedy that.

We will start with clearing the room of all furnishings and lifting your carpet off of the tack strip. Next we will use a tool called a power stretcher, this is a series of poles with a padded foot at one end and lever type fulcrum head at the other. This tool will gently remove the excess material from the ripple in your floor and stretch it much more tightly than a knee kicker will. Next we will trim off any excess carpet, reinstall the room and your carpet will be good and tight.

Now this is a perfect opportunity to clean your carpet too! After all all of the furniture is already out of the room and a tight carpet will clean up much better than one that is loose and rippled.

If you ever have any questions please feel free to call and ask me. I am always here for you.

Until next time,

Jay

This is a question I get all of the time.

How often should I clean my carpet. Frankly I do not want to be so presumptuous as to tell you how often you should clean your home, but I can tell you that carpet manufacturers suggest cleaning between every 12 to 18 months. The E.P.A. suggests a minimum of 6 to 12 months.

As a professional cleaner I can tell you that if you have waited long enough for your traffic lanes to get dark you have waited too long. Animal dander, body oils off your feet, or maybe just stuff you walked through on the pavement adheres to the fibers of your carpet and attracts dust and dirt.

Unlike other parts of the U.S. Here in the Las Vegas Desert our soil is high in silicates. These act like crushed glass mowing the tips of the fibers and become deeply embedded into your carpet. And once the damage is done it can not be undone.

Furthermore your carpet will begin accumulating allergens from pets, pollen on the spring wind, dropping from house hold pests. These should be removed on a yearly basis.

But beyond all of this I have customers I see twice a year and I have customers that I see every couple of years. In the end it really depends on your lifestyle. But if I was to make a recommendation as to how often you should clean your carpets in Las Vegas, I would say once a year at a minimum.

Until next time.

Jay

I want to tip my hat to a company out of Covington Georgia called Nyloboard.

The have begun taking carpet destined for the land fill and re-purposed it into a material perfect for decks. This product is mildew, rot, sun, and termite proof.

Check out their website by searching for Nyloboard and see for your self if this isn’t one of the best ideas to come down the road in a long time!

Until next time.

Jay

1. You should wait as long as possible to have your carpet cleaned. If this was true you would feel the same way about your socks! The dirty truth is it is a fiber you are walking on, your dogs are walking on, and your kids are spilling things on… get it cleaned!
2. Infomercial guys sell magical sprays that will instantly remove pet odors. Phht. please, if you believe that I have some beachfront property I want you to buy. The truth is that odors can be eliminated by good science and hard work. Not some crooked salesman with a cheesy accent or teeth that are just a little too white.
3. Once I clean my carpet it will get dirty again real fast. Again folks think about your socks. They will stay in your dresser for weeks at a time until you need to put them on and then guess what. Now it used to be in the dark ages of carpet cleaning that cleaning agents left a real heavy residue that would attract dirt. But today there are products that actually make your carpet more soil resistant than when your carpet was brand new.
4. Carpet protectors don’t really work. This was how I used to feel too. Then my wife and I moved into our first home. You know the drill a young couple moves into a new home and go out and get a puppy! Yep that’s what we did. But that was the moment I realized just how amazing a good carpet protector actually is. After the puppy “tinkeled” on the carpet… it actually beaded on top of the fibers like water on a freshly waxed car. Now like wax on your car it wont last for ever. So have it reapplied annually.
5. And saving the best for last. All carpet cleaners are the same, some just charge more. I love that one! All I can say is ask any one who has lived here in the valley for a few years and they tell you that George Knapp has done an expose on “XYZ Cleaners” about the bait and switch tactics their company employes. I have walked off of jobs as a brand new hire because I disagree with those underhanded tactics! And this I promise you. It will never happen in my company.

Until next time.

Jay

I know this is quite a bold headline, you are probably thinking right now what I first though when I read this on the CRI, the Carpet & Rug Institute’s blog,. But then I dove into the article a little deeper and was shocked by what a no brainer this is!

Firstly it helps set a mood. My Father commented 20 something years ago about grocery stores utilizing the color red to trigger impulsive reactions. It only stands to reason that a cool color of carpet can have a calming effect. As I have stated time and again carpet improves indoor air quality, as long as it is properly maintained. Carpet helps reduce noise making it easier to concentrate. And finally it reduces the risk of slips and falls by providing traction.

Just another reason to love your carpet.

Until next time,

Jay

Sorry guys there is no cut and dry answer here, but a lot of ifs.

If you have a small pet and there is only a small amount of waste, if the pet has only had an accident once in one specific area, if the spot is in a place in you room where it can get a lot of circulation.

So the answer is definitely this, carpet cleaning is not going to hurt.

Let me give you a little background to what is going on with pet odors, specifically pet urine odors.

When you pet urinates on your carpet it provides a food source to the bacteria that lives there, the urine also picks up bacteria as it passes the dermis and comes into contact with the animals fur. The bacteria breaks the urine down into food and creates in the process two byproducts; ammonia and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide odor molecules are small enough to become airborne by the carbon dioxide. This is the main source of the smell we associate with pet urine odors.

There is also a small amount of lipids, animal fat, which is present in the urine. This can, over time, create a greasy oily layer on the surface of the fibers of the carpet. This is significant because it means to remove the urine from the carpet you must first remove the layer of accumulated lipids. If you try to clean the spot with out removing this oily layer the cleaning agent will just sit on top of the spot or run to the outer edge.

If your pet is urinating on the same spot on a regular basis, even a couple times a month, the ammonia which is alkaline reacts to the acidic nature of the urine and creates salts. These salts are highly hydrophilic, water loving. This means that any moisture in the surrounding atmosphere will be picked up by these salts and used to help the bacteria continue to survive.

So will carpet cleaning help? If you have a small pet who had one accident, yes it will. But please be aware that it may not remove all of the problem.

If you have a large pet or a pet who has used your carpet on multiple occasions then it will still help remove the urine from the carpet, but will do little to remove the urine from the pad or the sub floor. There are more intensive treatments for that which include saturating the area with a special cleaning agent that breaks down the urine in the spot. Then removing the contaminated water with a special tool which you stand on. This tool removes the contaminated water from the carpet, the pad, and the sub floor. Next a second agent is sprayed on the area to help break down any urine that was left by the “top down” cleaning treatment.

If you have a sever case, you can still be saved. Pulling back the carpet, sealing the sub floor to prevent odor from seeping back out, removing and replacing the pad, cleaning the back and the front of the carpet and finally a heavy treatment of odor neutralizer.

I truly hope this has helped clear things up a little bit.

Thanks,

Jay