Rug Repair and Restoration: A Silk Chinese Carpet

We received a silk Chinese carpet from a rug dealer for repair. It had a very high count knots and it was damaged on three areas. We spent 45 days on the restoration of this hand knotted Chinese silk carpet.

To do the job, first we had to make foundation by warping, and securing the vertical threads. We had to use the same quality of silk with the same thickness to reach the same knot density and construction. We could not find all the colors of silk yarns we needed, therefore we had to dye some. After we finished weaving the damaged areas of the end in two places, we had to reweave the flat weave part which was very delicate. Rug repair is an art by itself.

The repair came out pretty good as you can see from the high resolution pictures I am posting. We have wrapped and packed the rug and are waiting for UPS to pick it up for delivery to this rug dealer. I am sure he will be proud of our cosmetic rug repair.

Dr. Khosrow Sobhe (Dr. Kay)
Certified Rug Specialist (CRS)
www.RugIdea.com
www.LosAngelesRugCleaning.com
310-770-9085



In order to

Rug Cleaning Cost in Los Angeles

Today, I received this e-mail from a reader of my blog and my website regarding rug cleaning and its cost:

"If you would be so kind as to answer my question, I would greatly appreciate it.

I have a 9’ x 12’ Chinese silk rug that needs cleaning. One business charges $200 for cleaning wool/machine made rugs, but $450 for cleaning silk rugs.

Another business charges $162 (for the 9’ x 12’ size) no matter what kind of oriental rug it is. They tell me they clean oriental rugs all the time with no problem.

Why does the first place charge more than double for silk while the second place doesn’t care?

Any advice you can give me with this would be greatly appreciated.

I enjoyed your website and blog!"

This is what I wrote to her:

" Thank you very much for your kind words. We usually charge $2/square foot for the wool rugs and $3/SF for silk rugs, but this is not absolute. We have a minimum charge of $75. Some rug dealers send out the rug to be washed in a cleaning/washing facility. In this case, they normally pay $1/SF themselves, so they charge their customers more. The quality of their wash is usually better since in the washing factory, the rug is washed with water and soap (regular detergent). Some rug dealers charge less,because they may clean the rug themselves in their back yard, or adjacent place they might have with special rug cleaning machine. In this case, the rug is not washed with ample water. They only clean the surface and since they do not pay the rug cleaning facility and the washing factory, they can charge less. This is not actual cleaning since it is like steam cleaning. The dust and dirt do not come out in this case."

Best regards,

Khosrow Sobhe

www.RugIdea.com

310-770-9085