This Christmas, Give Yourself the Gift of Clean Carpets!

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christmas box

December’s here, and along with the excitement of the holiday season comes the stress and overwhelm of holiday preparations. It’s cold outside, and all you want to do is relax in your warm house with your family, and maybe enjoy a little holiday cheer.

Maybe you’re hosting family for Christmas, or maybe you’re planning a holiday party. Preparing your home for guests can be stressful at any time of year, but it’s especially so in December, when most of us have so many other demands on our time. From gift shopping to meal planning to putting in the extra hours at work to wrap up those projects before taking time off for the holidays, you’re probably stretched pretty thin. When you have a few minutes to spare, you want to curl up beside the fire and stuff yourself with Christmas cookies, not worry about deep cleaning the living room.

Well, we have good news for you. Five Step Carpet Care can help you check at least one item off your never-ending December to-do list, and that’s the carpet and rugs. Our friendly and competent crew can get your carpets looking sparkling new in no time. We also offer a convenient rug pick-up and delivery service, so you can get your area rugs and fine rugs cleaned without leaving the comfort of your home.

And if you need upholstery, wood floor, or tile cleaning services? Yeah, we do that, too.

And, of course, our cleaning solutions are 100% green, non-toxic, and sustainable. So you can pamper your home without risking the health of your family, your pets, or the environment.

Even if you’re not hosting any gatherings this holiday season, what better way to treat yourself than with the gift of immaculately clean, vibrant carpets and rugs? It’s an excellent way to get the new year started right.

If you live in the Asheville, NC area, and you’re looking for a reliable and professional carpet cleaning service, give us a call at 828.237.3237 or send us a quick message using our contact form. Don’t worry, there’s still time to get those carpets and rugs spotless before Christmas!

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Happy Thanksgiving to all of our clients, staff, and friends! We have so much to be thankful for this year. We get to live and do business in an amazing community. We get to see the gorgeous mountain scenery every single day. We get to work with some of the best people on earth. And we get to do something something we’re good at that improves our clients’ lives.

So here’s to all the blessings of a life well lived, and wonderful people to share them with. We hope you are all spending the holidays warm, safe, and in the company of those you love. And we hope you have enough delicious pie to last you til December!

Oriental Rug Cleaning in Weaverville, NC

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We know that buying an oriental rug can be a serious investment, and keeping it beautifully maintained is a lifelong commitment. So when it comes to having your fine rugs cleaned, don’t just choose the first result that comes up on Google. Make sure that your investment is in safe hands.

To help you make an informed decision, Five Step Carpet Care is committed to honesty and transparency about our cleaning process. When you choose Five Step to clean your rugs, you can rest assured that:

  • We use the gentlest, most effective process available for cleaning oriental rugs and other fine rugs.
  • We don’t use bleach or bleach-based cleaners.
  • Our prices are affordable.
  • We can eliminate stains caused by ground in dirt, food spills, mold and mildew and even pet stains.
  • We don’t use enzyme-based cleaners.
  • There are no harsh chemicals in our cleansers.
  • We don’t wash your rug in a tub with other rugs.
  • Our cleaning solutions will not cause the colors on your rug to fade or bleed.
  • Our cleaning process is completely safe for wool fibers.
  • We offer pick up and delivery service.
  • Our products and process are entirely non-toxic and environment friendly.
  • Our team is professional and reliable. You can trust us to take good care of your fine rugs.

Our prices for cleaning rugs are as follows:

Regular Cleaning – $2.00 per square foot
Water/Mildew/Mold – $2.25 per square foot
Urine Removal – $2.50 per square foot

How to Calculate:

Inches x Inches = X
X Divided by 144 = Your Square Footage

We look forward to being your trusted source for green and sustainable oriental rug cleaning. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call us at 828.237.3237 or send us a message via our contact form.

10 Amazing Historical Facts About Carpet!

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Carpet is so commonplace in American homes today that we take it for granted. But it wasn’t always that way! Here’s a list of fascinating facts about the history of carpet.

  1. The oldest carpet known to historians is the Pazyryk carpet. It was discovered in a burial mound in Siberia in 1949 and had been preserved in ice for thousands of years.
  2. The word “carpet” comes from the Latin root carpere, meaning “to pluck.” This is because ancient carpet makers practiced their craft by plucking unraveled fibers. The Latin phrase carpe diem originates from the same root, meaning “to sieze (or pluck) the day.”
  3. “Rolling out the red carpet” is a custom rooted in ancient times. Kings, politicians, and dignitaries walked atop red carpets to mark their routes through crowded cities. The first recorded reference in history to the custom was for Agamemnon in 458 BC.
  4. Cyrus the Great was said to have introduced carpets (and the art of making them) to Persia, after having been awed by the beauty of the carpets he saw when he conquered Babylon in 539 BC.
  5. Early colonial settlers in America used large rugs woven from wool to cover the floors in their homes.
  6. Before vacuum cleaners, no one had wall-to-wall carpets. Instead, they used large area rugs that had to be taken outside and beaten with sticks or wire carpet beaters to clean. This was typically done only once a year, during spring cleaning.
  7. In 1971, the first woven carpet mill was opened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by William Sprague.
  8. The kind of wall-to-wall tufted carpets we are familiar with today started out as blankets. Catherine Evans Whitener of Dalton, Georgia, began making bedspreads out of muslin cloth with tufted yarn sewn into it. These became very popular, starting a new cottage industry in the region which eventually led to mill-produced, tufted carpets based on Whitener’s original bedspread pattern.
  9. The first factories producing wall-to-wall tufted carpets were started in the same town of Dalton, Georgia after World War II, and to this day, Dalton is considered the carpet capital of the world, producing 70% of the world’s carpets.
  10. The Hoover company had a hard time selling its original prototype vacuum cleaners because people were offended at the idea that their carpets might be dirty!

Pet Odor Removal in Weaverville NC

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What’s that smell?!?

Attention, Weaverville! Pet odor removal is possible!

Did your puppy have a few accidents in the family room before he graduated potty training? Or does your cat track litter into the carpeted hallway? Maybe you have a sick or elderly pet who has continence issues. Or perhaps you just have that unmistakable “dog smell” from fur and dander being ground deep into your carpet pile, where the vacuum can’t reach it.

Is it a lost cause, or is there a way to rid your home of bad pet odors without shipping your furry friends off to the farm?

Chances are, the odors are actually coming from the bottom of the carpet, or the padding underneath. But you don’t have to rip the carpet out and replace it to get rid of the odors! Quality professional carpet cleaning can address those smells (and stains) for good.

At Five Step Carpet Care, we help homeowners (and landlords) with pet odor problems every week. We’ll get rid of those smelly spots so that you and your pets can enjoy your carpet again. Best of all, our green, non-toxic five step process will take care of those odors without leaving any chemical residues behind.

If you live in Weaverville (or anywhere in western NC) and you struggle with pet related odors in your home, give Five Step a call at 828.237.3237 or send us a message.

 

7 Reasons NOT to Hire a Professional Carpet Cleaner

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We’re always advising readers on the benefits of professional carpet cleaning here on the blog. Of course we are! We believe in what we do, and we want your business! But, that having been said, it must be noted that professional carpet cleaning is NOT for everyone. Here is a list of reasons why you might not want to hire a carpet cleaning service.

 

  1. You don’t have carpets. If your home does not have any carpets, it would be kind of silly to hire a professional carpet cleaner.
  2. You might lose your dog. If your original carpet color matches your dog’s coat color, then having your carpets professionally cleaned might not be for you. That gray cast that your carpet takes on when it is dirty might be the only thing keeping you from a frightening dog camouflage situation like this:
  3. That pizza sauce stain is your friend. Maybe you don’t get out much. We’re not here to judge. If you have named the stains on your carpet, given them their own coffee mug, and taken to having long conversations with them in the evenings, then a carpet cleaner is probably not the professional you need to see.
  4. All your friends will want to sleep on your floor. This is one of the biggest risks of having your carpet cleaned. Once your friends see how luxuriously clean and soft your carpet is, they might start making excuses to come over for a visit—and end up napping on the carpet.
  5. You are an alien blob who floats through the air.If you never use your carpet, then it probably won’t get dirty, and therefore it doesn’t make sense to clean it. So if your alien biology precludes you from having feet or otherwise coming into contact with your floor, then you’re off the hook for carpet cleaning.
  6. You’re a wizard. If you’re Molly Weasley, then you definitely don’t need carpet cleaning services. You have a wand, possibly a house elf, and a dozen spells up your sleeve for all manner of home cleaning emergencies. In fact, maybe you should consider starting your own magic carpet cleaning service for Muggles.
  7. You have a symbiotic relationship with dust mites. 

    Perhaps you have some kind of reverse bubble-boy syndrome. Instead of experiencing allergic reactions at the tiniest exposure to environmental contaminants, you actually require mass exposure to these allergens in order to remain healthy. In that case, you should keep your carpet dirty. For your health.

 

If none of the above reasons apply to you, we’d be happy to clean your carpets! (If you live in the Asheville, NC area, that is.) Give us a call at 828.237.3237 or send us a message today!

 

4 Hardwood Floor Cleaning Myths – BUSTED!

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wood floor cleaning

In the years that we’ve been providing wood floor cleaning services in the Asheville, NC area, we’ve encountered a lot of persistent bad information about cleaning wood floors. So we decided to write a blog post to address all of the most common myths.

  1. Shine=Clean. Not necessarily. Although it’s true that a clean floor should shine, the fact is that the shine of your floor has as much or more to do with its surface smoothness as with cleanliness. Dull floors can result from tiny scratches and scuffs on the surface of the wood. To restore shine to a floor like that, refinishing is usually required.
  2. Wood floors need to be treated with oil. It used to be true that wood floors benefitted from application of oil soap. But that was back when hardwoods were sealed with wax, which dehydrated the wood, creating a need to replenish the wood’s natural moisture with oil. Now, most wood floors are sealed with polyurethane, not wax. Polyurethane sealer does not allow moisture to escape the wood, so no oil is needed. And besides, modern sealers create a barrier which will not allow the oil to soak into the wood itself, so if you apply oil to a modern wood floor it will just make the floor slick.
  3. Mix vinegar in with your wood floor cleaner. This is another piece of advice that used to be sensible in the old days, but isn’t true any longer. In bygone eras, the all-purpose, lye based soaps were much harsher than our modern wood floor specific soaps. People used to add some vinegar to the mop bucket to lessen the harshness of the soap. (What they probably didn’t know was that the vinegar lowered the PH of the cleaning solution, making it less harmful to the wood floors.) Modern wood floor cleaners are formulated to have suitable PH levels, so adding vinegar is no longer necessary.
  4. Just clean your wood floors with water. It depends on how heavy of a clean you’re doing. You can damp mop most wood floors with just plain water, but you must use a very small amount of water—just enough to pick up dust and no more. For actual deep cleaning, use a liquid floor cleaner formulated for wood floors (we recommend Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner), and make sure to follow the directions on the bottle to the letter!

Hopefully this post helps to clear up some of the most common misunderstandings about caring for hardwood floors. Need more help? We’re here for you! If you live in the Asheville, NC area and are looking for high quality professional wood floor cleaning, give Five Step a call at 828.237.3237 or get in touch via our contact form today!

 

6 Tips for Hiring a GOOD Upholstery Cleaner

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Hiring a good upholstery cleaner can pose a difficult choice, to say the least. Since upholstery cleaning is something most people only do when the need arises because of stains, it can be hard to maintain a relationship with your upholstery cleaner like you do with a mechanic or lawn care service. And with so many options on the market, it’s hard to know what type of service to go with.

To make matters worse, many upholstery cleaners make it nearly impossible to find out basic information through their website or promotional materials, such as whether they use bleach or soap products in their cleaning solutions. And then there are always those horror stories about perfectly good pieces of furniture getting completely ruined by incompetent cleaners—or, even worse, a child or pet becoming ill from exposure to the upholstery fabric after cleaning.

Thankfully, there are ways to limit the possibility of something going horribly wrong when you are hiring a upholstery cleaner. It’s a fairly simple matter of doing a small amount of homework before making your decision. Here’s a quick list of items to check up on for each company you consider.

  1. Find out how long the company has been in business. While a shorter length of time in business shouldn’t necessarily disqualify an upholstery cleaning service (everyone has to start somewhere), it is important to determine how much experience the company has. You don’t want to be taken in by a fly-by-night company that will clean your armchair today and go out of business next week. If the company you’re considering has been around for less than a year or two, find out what experience the owner and employees had prior to the company’s opening, and check online for reviews and testimonials.
  2. Learn what type of equipment and cleaning solutions they use. There are all types of upholstery cleaning systems and equipment. You should be able to fairly easily determine what kind your prospective carpet cleaner uses by looking on their website. If they don’t have a website, that might be a warning sign. If the information you’re looking for isn’t readily available on the website, the owner or representative should answer your question when you ask without hesitation.
  3. Pricing considerations. There are a lot of things in life that you can skimp on, trying to get the absolute lowest price. But upholstery cleaning is not one of them. An incredibly low price usually means incredible incompetence. On the other hand, if the price seems way too expensive, you would probably do well to keep shopping. Do the math. Does it seem reasonable that a company could stay in business charging the price that you were quoted, without cutting corners?
  4. Make sure the company is bonded and insured. No matter how good an upholstery cleaning service is, no one is immune to accidents. As with any service provider doing work in your home, make absolutely sure the service you choose is bonded and insured…just in case.
  5. Check Reviews. It’s the age of information! If you can’t find reviews of a service company online, chances are they’re either brand-spanking new, or they are going to great lengths to keep reviews off the internet. Good, honest businesses LOVE reviews. Even if there’s an occasional nasty one, the good ones more than make up for it by bringing new and repeat clients to their door. Free sites like Yelp! and membership sites like Angie’s List will show you reviews of all the relevant service providers in your area. But Googling the name of the company you’re researching is also an effective way to find reviews.
  6. How do the company representatives treat you? Even if a company passes all five of the tests above, you want to make sure they’re going to treat you with respect and consideration. When you call or email the company, do they get back to you within a reasonable time frame? Are they friendly and courteous? Do they answer your questions honestly? If the company passes this final test, you’ve probably found yourself a keeper.

We hope this list helps you through the sometimes frustrating task of choosing an upholstery care company. If you live in the Asheville, NC area, you are welcome to put us to the test! Peruse our blog and website, and feel free to call us at 828.237.3237 or get in touch through the contact form with any additional questions you might have.

WNC Cigarette Smoke Odor Removal

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cigarette smoke odor removal

As WNC’s top source for carpet cleaning, we’ve received a lot of calls over the years from ex-smokers. They’ve made amazing improvements to their health and quality of life by making the choice to quit smoking, and following through on that choice. But their houses still smell like the inside of a 1970s dive bar. For someone who has just recently quit smoking, it doesn’t take long before that odor becomes unbearable, and that’s when they give Five Step a call.

Years of indoor smoking can (and invariably does) leave behind strong, unpleasant odors that just won’t go away no matter how much the house is aired out with fans, or the carpets deodorized. Even worse, it is now known that exposure to this “third-hand” cigarette smoke can pose severe health risks, even after months of not smoking in the room. Infants and young children are especially susceptible. Studies have shown that even small amounts of third hand smoke exposure can be associated with respiratory diseases and developmental delays.

If you’ve accomplished the momentous feat of quitting smoking, congratulations! Give yourself a big pat on the back. You’ve made a smart decision, and your hard work and commitment to quit is commendable. Your next step should be to rid your home of the stinky and harmful odors and residues left behind by your former habit.

One thing a lot of homeowners will do after quitting smoking is to repaint the walls. This is a crucial step! But just as important, if not more so, is doing something about your upholstery, carpets, and rugs.

You may have received advice from well-meaning friends and relatives along the lines of “there’s no getting that smell out—you’ll just have to replace the carpet!” But that isn’t true. Good, professional carpet, rug, and upholstery cleaning CAN eliminate both the unpleasant odors and the harmful residues left behind by years of cigarette smoke and tar.

In addition to helping out ex-smokers, we’ve also cleaned carpets for homeowners who purchased a house in which the former occupants smoked cigarettes, and for landlords whose tenants smoked in the house. Whatever the reason, if you’ve got a lingering cigarette smoke odor problem in your carpets, rugs, or upholstery, we can help! If you live in the Asheville, NC area, give us a call at 828.237.3237 or get in touch via our contact form today!

 

Risks of DIY Carpet Cleaning

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diy carpet cleaning risks

In order to save money, many homeowners choose to handle household maintenance tasks on their own, rather than hiring professionals to do the work. These days you can find a tutorial on the internet for how to DIY just about anything—from pest control to small engine repair and yes, even carpet cleaning. It may be tempting to save a few dollars by renting a machine and cleaning your own flooring. But is doing it yourself worth the potential risk to your carpet or area rug investment?

Do-it-yourself carpet cleaning is often discouraged by carpet and rug manufacturers because improper techniques and inappropriate cleaning solutions may cause problems that could void the carpet’s warranty. Common issues that may arise from improper DIY carpet cleaning include mold and mildew growth, backing separation, and fading or discoloration.

The most prevalent of DIY carpet cleaning mistakes is overwetting. If you use too much water in your cleaning efforts, the carpet will take much longer to dry, which can potentially lead to fungal growth or even water seepage into your subfloors. The problem is it’s not always self-evident to the homeowner how much water and/or detergent to use, or how long to leave a steam cleaner in position. A blunder during this phase of the carpet cleaning process can be very costly indeed, which is why the majority of homeowners choose to hire a reputable carpet cleaning service.

Another culprit behind DIY disasters is improperly formulated carpet cleaning solutions. Cleaners and detergents that are not formulated correctly for your carpet may strip it of its stain-resistant treatment. Worse, some solutions contain bleach or optical brighteners that literally dye your carpet to cover up the stains instead of removing them. Some improper formulations can also destroy the fiber of your carpet or rug, leaving it looking matted or frayed.

Consumer Reports has found that when it comes to carpet cleaning, pros do it best. Although a professional cleaning may be a little more costly than renting a machine from your local supermarket, the benefits that you get from having someone experienced do the work far outweigh the extra cost.

The message here is “DIY Your Carpet Cleaning at Your Own Risk!”

If you do choose to clean your own carpets, you should take the time to do your research before beginning. Find out exactly what type of cleaning is recommended by the carpet manufacturer, and the follow the directions of the detergent and/or steam cleaner precisely. Always spot-test an out-of-the-way corner of your carpet before cleaning it, to prevent discoloration issues. And if you will be renting steam cleaning equipment, ask the rental provider to demonstrate its use before taking it home. During the demonstration, listen closely for out-of-the-ordinary clunking noises and check the test carpet for fraying and loose fibers.

If, on the other hand, you decide to go with the safe bet, give your local professional carpet care expert a call. If you live in the Asheville, NC area and are looking for quality carpet cleaning services, look no further than Five Step Carpet Care. Give us a call at 828.237.3237 or use our contact form to get in touch with us today. You might be surprised by how much you can save by hiring professionals to get the job done!