Most carpet jobs in Fulham start on the pavement. We find somewhere legal to park, ring the bell and walk the rooms with you before any equipment is set up. You get the price on that walk round and it doesn’t move once we begin.
The morning, step by step
First comes a dry vacuum with a beater-bar upright. Grit lifts far better dry, and wetting a gritty carpet just makes mud. Then a pre-spray goes on, chosen for the fibre: a mild one on wool, something with more bite on the polypropylene twist that turns up in a lot of let flats. While that sits for ten minutes or so we move what can be moved, which means sofas, chairs, coffee tables and beds on castors.
The extraction pass is the bit people picture. Hot water is sprayed into the pile and drawn straight back up through the same wand, taking the loosened soil out of your carpet with it. Hallways and the path from the sofa to the kitchen get extra passes. A hand tool does the strip along the skirting that the wide wand can’t reach. Then the pile gets brushed flat one way, which helps it dry evenly, and every piece of furniture goes back on a foil square or a plastic block.
Give the rooms a few hours before normal use. Leave the foil under the legs until the next morning, because damp wool will take a mark from a wooden foot.
What moves the price
We charge by the room, so the count matters more than the size. Bedrooms are £36 each; the living room is £43. Where the front and back reception have become a single room, as in plenty of SW6 terraces, that counts as a through lounge at £61. The hall costs £22 and each flight of stairs £41; the landing at the top adds £9. A study, box room or kitchen-diner is £29.
One-off visits carry a £67 minimum, which is what one bedroom on its own would cost. Add the stairs and you are past it: £36 and £41 make £77. If a room is unusually big, say a lower ground floor opened out from front to back, we say so on the phone before we come.
In a Fulham house
The dug-out lower ground floors that so many Fulham houses now have are the slowest rooms to dry. The air is cool down there and a carpet can stay damp into the evening. Warm the room for an hour before we arrive, then leave a window on the latch or a dehumidifier running once we have gone.
Stair runners fitted over the original boards are cleaned in place with the hand tool on a light setting, so water doesn’t creep past the edge of the runner onto the paint. Sisal and seagrass are a different matter. Water stains them, so if your hall is natural fibre it gets a thorough vacuum and no wet cleaning at all.
The supply here is hard, and a carpet rinsed in plain hard water can feel stiff and pick up dirt again quickly, wool in particular. Our final rinse is softened for that reason.
Prices
| Service | Price |
|---|---|
| Bedroom | £36 |
| Living room | £43 |
| Knock-through lounge | £61 |
| Stairs, per flight | £41 |
| Small rug (to 3m²) | £35 |
| Rug over 3m² | £51 |
| Carpet per bedroom, alongside an end of tenancy | £29 |
| Living room, with a move-out clean | £36 |
| Flight of stairs, alongside an end of tenancy | £35 |
For marks that survive a normal clean, see stain removal, and for loose rugs on bare boards, the rug page. Sofas, curtains and the rest are on our prices page. If you live near the green, the Parsons Green page has notes on the Lion Houses.
Questions we get asked
Will the van get a ticket if you come on a match day?
Not if we plan it. Around Stamford Bridge the bays are controlled from 8.30am to 10pm every day, and on Craven Cottage match days zone T is controlled from 9am to 10pm, Sundays included. Pay and display there runs out after an hour or two, which is shorter than most carpet jobs. For a weekend booking near either ground we will ask you to book the van a visitor session on RingGo, in a shared bay.
Our basement carpet smells musty. Will a clean sort it out?
It takes out the soil and whatever has soaked into the pile, and that is usually most of the smell. If damp is coming up through the floor, though, the smell returns with it, and no carpet cleaner can fix that. We will tell you on the day if the underlay feels wet. Warm the room first and it dries in hours.
Do we have to stay in while you work?
Only at the start and the finish. Let us in and walk the rooms with us to agree the price, then go out if you like. A two-bedroom flat with a hall usually takes us a morning. Be back, or have someone there, when we finish so you can look at the rooms before we load the van.
Can you clean a stair runner with bare wood either side?
Yes. A runner is priced as a normal flight, £41, and we work it with a small hand tool on low moisture so the painted edges stay dry. If it is held by stair rods, take them out the night before and put them somewhere safe, which saves them getting bent.