Free Local Rug Pick Up and Delivery and Cost of Gas in Los Angeles

We have free local pick up and delivery as a courtesy to our customers. On Saturday, we sold two Persian rugs to a customer who lived in Beverly Hills. These were two hand knotted runners. We delivered the rugs and on our way back to work, I noticed the cost of gas in a gas station which was almost $5/gallon!

With the rising price of gas, I doubt if we can continue having free rug pick up and delivery for rug cleaning and repair. We should think of a way to have a charge not to make money but to cover the price of gas and our cost. I know our customers would not be happy, but we can do this service up to a point.

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

Don't Mess Around With Moth

You have Oriental rugs. You think you save money by not cleaning them professionally and then leave them in plastic bags in dark and humid place such as your basement or garage. This is what happens. You freak out when you open this rug and wonder why it is severely damaged by moth.

We receive many rugs for cleaning by the clients who say their rugs have been in storage for a while. Before we take a look at the rug we mention that there would be a high chance of moth damage. Our customers deny that until we open the rugs and show them the moths and the damages.

What is the solution? Cleaning in the first place. Rugs should be vacuumed regularly and depending on the dirt and traffic, they should be professionally and deeply cleaned every two years or so. This is not expenditure; it is investing in the rugs and in our health.

Click on each picture to enlarge to see the extent of the penetration of the moths.

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

Silk Shag Rug Cleaning & Stain Removal

Shag rugs are pretty and soft. You can have a great cushioning when you walk, sit, or lay on them. But like pretty girl friends or handsome boy friends, shag rugs are difficult to keep and care for!

Shag rugs and carpets easily become dirty and stained, and they are not easy to vacuum. Dust and dirt are deposited in the high pile. But regardless of the hassles, they look trendy and elegant on the floor specially if you have hard floors such as wood, laminate, ceramic or tile.

We receive many shag carpets for cleaning and repair. Most of our customers who have shag rugs are in arts or entertainment industry. We received this dirty silk shag rug recently. It was very dirty and was full of stains with some pinkish purple spots. We could remove all those stains without damaging the fiber.

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

USC Trojans Receive 10% Off Rug Cleaning Rug Repair, Rug Purchase

I graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) in 1982. I got my second Master's degree and my Ph.D. from this wonderful prestigious university here in Los Angeles. It was established in 1880, more than 130 years ago. It has been thriving ever-since with more than 37,000 students enrolled in 2011. There are 3,300 full-time faculty members and 11,500 full time staff members on board with 7,500 student workers totaling 22,300. There are nearly 233,000 living alumni in the Trojan Family. Graduates and members of this big USC family are called the Trojans.

I woke up this morning and decided to give 10% discount to the Trojans for rug cleaning, rug repair, rug stain removal, and appraisal. The discount also applies to purchase of rugs.

This is the benefit of having your own business. You don't have to get anybody's permission to do something like giving discounts to your fellow university mates. Isn't that great?!

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

Dog on Rug and Professional Deep Rug Cleaning

Today a customer brought in a small Pakistani carpet for professional deep rug cleaning. Her dog apparently loved this rug a lot that she wouldn't let go of it. The dog kept playing around on this Oriental rug and wouldn't let us fold it and put it aside for cleaning. I took few of pictures of the dog, sitting, sleeping, and walking on the rug. She and her owner will both definitely love the rug more after it is professionally and deeply cleaned.

Dogs give us unconditional love, but this love like other types of love maybe costly!Sometimes dogs make accident on the rugs. Sometimes they chew off the rugs and damage them. probably half of the rugs we receive for cleaning, repair or stain removal are damaged or stained by dogs. We love dogs. They give us business.

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

Ashkan Sobhe and BNI Money Makers Chapter

My older son Ashkan who has his own company ITChair.com is the vice president of BNI (Business Network International) Money Makers chapter here in Los Angeles. Last week, the president of the chapter was absent so Ashkan had to run the entire meeting. We had a new member who joined earlier and was sworn in by Ashkan. This process of being sworn to BNI is called Induction. Overall the meeting went very well as always. It started fifteen minutes to 8:00 am by open networking and ended at 9:30 am.

Our Money Makers chapter is one of the biggest chapters of BNI. This is a professional organization which works based on referrals. It has more than 130,000 members in more than 5,000 chapters.

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

Cosmetically Repairing a Hand Knotted Persian Tabriz Rug

Before

After

Couple of weeks ago we received a beautiful Tabriz Rug which was unfortunately damaged. The Warp And Weft of the Tabriz Rug were torn apart. This could be caused by hard pulls on the rug, uneven and not fully drying the rug, steam cleaning, using harsh and strong chemicals by those who did the last cleaning on this beautiful huge hand knotter Persian Tabriz rug. Our customer took the rug to several places and he was told that The Oriental Rugs could not be repaired if they had damages like this. We loved the challenge. Fortunately we were capable of handling the job so we Professionally Repaired and Restored the Persian Tabriz Rug. With the mix of blocking and many repairs done by our master weavers, we managed to bring the rug back to life. The rug is in a much better condition than it was and is ready to be put back on the floor and used for many more years.

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

Los Angeles Rug Cleaning and LosAngelesRugCleaning.com

Besides selling many types of rugs, we do professional rug cleaning and repair. The DBA under which we do these services is called Los Angeles Rug Cleaning and the website related to this DBA is called www.LosAngelesRugCleaning.com

Now this DBA and website has become a brand and we receive many calls every day from clients who are looking for and asking for our services. This has tempted some rug or carpet cleaners to imitate us and use our name or our copy righted materials from our web site. I just noticed that a rug cleaner in the San Fernando Valley area specifically from a town called Reseda north of Los Angeles has copied the entire page from our website's homepage. I contacted them and asked them to remove that. They wrote to me:

"Dear Mr. Sobhe,

This is H. R., I didn't know that you did carpet cleaning at all and I thought that you only sold rugs. I never looked at your site or my employees. I don't know what word you are concerned about but please let me know what paragraph and which page is disturbing your business or bothering you.

My site has nothing that I know about copied from any site. Please let me know what is the wording and I will have the wording corrected."

It seems that they should know what I do in order not to copy our content or not to use our registered trade mark. I wrote to them that it is not a word, sentence, line, or a paragraph. It is the ENTIRE page and provided them with the link. This is what they wrote back to me:

"Dear Mr. Sobhe,

I will email this to our web site designer and see what is going on. I have never seen this particular page on our home page and will see when it was changed. I hope that we are not using the same people for our web site optimization. As you know they are constantly changing the sites. It will be removed as soon as possible."

What kind of a businessman are you that you do not have any idea of your website! After I told them that they should remove all of our contents from their website otherwise our lawyers will take appropriate legal actions, they fixed their content and removed our stuff from their website.

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

Rug Repair Rug Restoration: A Testimonial Video

We recently did repair and restoration of three rugs for a rug dealer from Florida. He was referred to us by a mutual friend. Two of these rugs were antique 120-year old Isfahan carpets which were damaged on the ends, sides and in the middle. Their foundation was very fragile.

The other rug was a silk Chinese rug. It was damaged on three different areas by a dog. We dyed the silk yarn to match the color. We matched the construction and design and made the foundation based on which we rewove the damaged areas. The difficult part was redoing the one inch flat-weave on the fringes. The repair came out very good.

This rug dealer received the rugs yesterday. He was so happy and blown away with the quality of the repair jobs. He provided us with a testimonial video. We edited the video and added the before and after pictures and a short weaving video to this testimonial. You can watch it here. It feels so good to see happy customers.

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

I Love My Job! Hand Cleaning and Restoring an Antique Tapestry

I love my job! Why?! Because it is full of art, culture, history, and of course, surprises. Sometimes we receive old and antique rugs, kilims or tapestries and the owners have no idea whatsoever if these items are worth anything. It is like the Antiques Road Show. When I tell them that their rug is for example made in Iran in the 4th quarter of the 19th century and it is worth thousands of dollars, they cannot believe that and this is what I love to see. I am blessed to have the opportunity to see these objects of art in my rug gallery here in Los Angeles.

Last week we received two antique tapestries for cleaning and repair. One is from the early 20th and the other from early 19th century. The younger one was used on the floor while the older piece was hanging on a wall. The older piece which is a beautiful silk tapestry was used in a warm and humid place therefore it is full of mildew. The construction is very fragile and rotten in so many areas that it cannot be vacuumed. We had to use small tiny brushes to remove the mildew before we can hand clean this beautiful big 10' x 14' antique tapestry. After that, we will take care of repair and restoration.

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

Carpet Cleaning Tips For Dummies

We buy Carpet Cleaning Tips For Dummies booklets in bulk to give them to our customers as free of charge gifts. The title is very catchy and our customers like to get this little book as a gift. It has many good and simple instructions on rug cleaning, stain removal, and vacuuming.

It also talks about the type of vacuum cleaners which are good. A vacuum cleaning machine does not have to be very luxury and expensive. It asks why you want clean carpets and then gets down to the answers.

This book has many good tips on vacuuming Oriental, hand made and area rugs.Area rugs with fringe require a special technique. We should use gentle suction and start from the center of the rug vacuuming toward the fringes and being careful not to catch the fringes and tassels in the beater bar. We should lift the rug edges to vacuum beneath the fringes. We may notice that heirloom or antique rugs often have missing fringes, probably the result of over-vigorous vacuuming or playful pets. Missing and damaged fringes depreciate and decrease the value of a rug.

If you live in or visit Los Angeles, you can stop by our rug gallery to receive this book as well as other books, literature and gifts.

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

Round Chinese Rug Cleaning and Pet Stain Removal

Today we received a round Chinese Rug which a customer brought for cleaning and stain removal. Her dog had urinated all over the round rug. We have to do professional deep cleaning for the round Chinese Rug. once the Oriental rug is dusted, cleaned, and sanitized we will do pet stain removal on this rug to remove the dog urine stains.

Fortunately her rug is not damaged so it does not need Oriental Rug Repair and Restoration. Her rug will be much cleaner, softer, and shinier after the service is done and she can enjoy it for many more years to come.

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

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



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