Rug Cleaning in Masonboro

Almost every unsalvageable rug we are called to on this stretch was made unsalvageable after the water rather than by it. A rug gets wet — a creek that came up, a slider that leaked, a supply line that let go — and in a house with mould on everyone's mind the response is chlorine bleach, or a fogger, or a canned treatment off the hardware store shelf. Wool is keratin, the same protein as hair, and hypochlorite bleach attacks protein directly: it breaks the disulphide bonds that give the fibre its strength, so the wool yellows, then goes brittle, then powders when you rub it, and the dye leaves with it. That is not reversible, and there is often nothing sound to reweave into either, because the foundation around the damage has been weakened at the same time. Quaternary fogging is gentler but leaves a cationic residue that attracts soil and keeps attracting it. The right first move on a wet rug here is a dull one: get it up off the floor, keep it open to the air instead of sealed in plastic, photograph it, and let the treatment happen in a wash where the chemistry can be matched to the fibre and then rinsed back out.