Rug Cleaning in Ansonborough
Collection and delivery in Ansonborough are included. We take the rug back to the workshop, wash it properly, and bring it home.
What Ansonborough is built from
The blocks north-east of the market, the city’s first suburb, rebuilt almost entirely in brick after the fire of 1838 and then restored house by house through the Historic Charleston Foundation’s revolving fund from 1959 onward. Solid masonry walls, tall ceilings, and on a great many facades the iron anchor plates and tie rods that were driven through these houses after the earthquake of 1886.
A restored, largely owner-occupied district with a strong preservation culture. Houses are looked after properly and rugs are expected to last decades — which they will, provided somebody turns one over occasionally.
The Ansonborough problem
Solid masonry gives up its own salts, and that is what catches people here, because it has nothing to do with the harbour. Brick and lime mortar contain soluble mineral salts; as a wall takes up moisture and gives it back it carries them to the surface, where they crystallise — usually low down, where the wall meets the floor. A rug whose edge lies along that skirting takes them into its foundation, and they are alkaline. That is enough to shift the pH the wool sits in and enough to unsettle dyes along one edge, which is how the border of an otherwise sound rug goes chalky and slightly off-colour in a band while the middle is untouched. The 1886 retrofit adds to it: those anchor plates and rods are iron set into masonry, and water that has run over a weeping iron fixing is not clean water when it reaches the floor. None of this is fixed by cleaning the surface. It is a rinse-and-neutralise job worked from the back of the rug, and it is worth catching while it is still a band rather than a hole.
If that sounds like your rug, send the form and describe what you are seeing. We will tell you whether it needs the full treatment or not.
We collect from these too
Ready when you are, Ansonborough
Free inspection, free collection, and a real number before anything starts.