Infloormation

The living room and the family room is where the family gathers all the time to spend some quality time together. That is why it is very important these rooms should be comfortable and inviting for this is where the family spends most of their time.

One way to create a homey feel to any living room and family room is by installing carpets. Carpets have a lot of benefits:

1. Safety. If you have kids, installing carpet will greatly benefit you as it provides cushion reducing the impact of fall or any accident.
2. Natural Insulation. Carpets also act as a natural insulator as it keeps the house warm during winter and trap cool air during summer months.
3. Sound Reduction. Carpets reduce noise because it absorbs any foot traffic and it blocks sound between floors.
4. Comfort. Since carpets are soft, it provides a comfortable walking surface.
5. Beauty. It adds additional style and concept to the room because of its varied patterns, styles and colors.

When choosing the carpet that will work well for your living room and family room, you have to take into consideration that this room is one of the busiest places in your home so you should choose a carpet color and style that can take the wear and tear. The color should not be that light that even a small drop of soda is easily noticed. The pattern should also not be too boring as it should create a very relaxing and homey feel to the room.

Pierce Flooring and Design will help you choose the best carpet for your living room and family room visit our website for more information or drop by your local location.

From time to time, we will be sharing expert advice from our own Bill Gamsby. Bill is a master cleaner registered with IICRC and currently is a salesman for The Carpet Barn (www.cbarn.com) His experience includes previously owning his own carpet cleaning business for 16 years. He still does this from time to time to stay in practice and stay up to date on cleaning and new developments. Because he likes people so much and enjoys solving problems, he plans to share his expert advice that he’s learned over the years in order to help the readers of Infloormation!

Here’s his first advice on how to get chewing gum out of carpet:

1. Put an ice cube on the gum for 5 minutes.  (This will harden the gum so you can hit it with a table knife handle and  break it up. Once it is broken into smaller pieces the back of a table knife works well. Firmly slide the knife across the effected area always going the same direction. DO NOT try to cut the gum out.

If you didn’t get all of the gum out:

2. Now reach for the peanut butter jar.  Place a 1/2 tsp of peanut butter on the gum, let it sit for 20 minutes.  This will soften the gum and
dissolve it.  Using a clean white cotton rag, gently pick up the peanut butter.  Usually the gum comes with it.  If not, squeese each remaining fiber that has gum on it with the rag and slide the rag up the fiber starting as close to the base as possible.
3. To remove the peanut butter residue. Have Fido lick it:)  Seriously,  put 1/2 tsp of dawn (or other mild liquid detergent)  into a cup of cold water, dip a clean rag into the mixture and gently message the peanut butter out of the carpet.  DO NOT RUB! This creates heat and distorts the carpet fibers.  Treat your carpet as though it were your skin. Go one direction carefully then go another direction carefully. I usually take 3-4 strokes per direction.  The detergent mixture will remove the oils and residue from the peanut butter.
TaDa…. no gum!

Question: Our baby is due in a few months, and I want wood floors throughout the house. Is wood a good choice for a nursery?

Answer: Wood works very well in a nursery. From a design perspective it is a nice counterpoint to the pastels or bright colors generally found in a nursery, and it is a workhorse when it comes to playing.

Babies learn to walk with lots of falls, but wood is considered a soft flooring option, with much more natural cushioning than something like tile or stone. It is also smooth, making walking easier. There is even evidence that giving a baby “tummy time” on a hard surface helps develop cognitive abilities.

If you want to create a soft spot for playing consider a nice area rug such as the one shown in the photo. Add a well-cushioned pad underneath and you have created the perfect space for spending time on the floor. There are rugs made for nurseries, but you may want to select one like this that will last long after the changing table is gone. If you match colors you can be pretty flexible on style.

Another short-term option is to select carpeting that would work well with your decorating plans, and have a piece bound for your nursery. You want to size it so that there is at least a six to eight inch edge of wood floor showing at the borders. This enlarges your selection for both color and pattern. Ask about any remnants available and you may get a good deal. Binding is also generally pretty reasonable.

Think versatility as you select your nursery flooring. After all, the flooring will still be there long after your baby is old enough to ask for the car keys and gas money!

After a professional carpet cleaning, a successful end result depends on you managing the drying process. Particularly in the winter, it can be challenging to get your carpet dry quickly, but delays can lead to problems with mold. A few simple steps will keep your drying process straightforward.

Turn your heating system fan from auto to on. Your goal is to ventilate the house and get the humidity out. You may also want to turn on any bathroom or kitchen fans that vent to the outside. Turning the heat up a few degrees will also speed the drying process. If it’s warm enough, open some windows – not energy efficient, but your goal is to get the carpet dry.

Turn on all ceiling fans, and position any portable fans you have on areas not reached by your ceiling blowers. If you rented a professional fan, start it on a broad area, and move it around over the rest of the day. Press your hand hard on the carpeting to see if an area is dry.

If you have pets that like the furniture, cover any upholstery with towels to avoid wet paw prints on your sofa.

Any transition from carpeting to a hard surface can be slippery, because the water migrates to those areas. Wet shoes can also make you slip when you move to tile or other hard surfaces from the damp carpet. Make sure to dry those areas off and place a towel or rug at thresholds to keep you and family members safe.

Your carpet should be pretty dry by the evening, or the next day at the latest. Then you are free to enjoy your new-looking flooring!

As you prepare for the holidays, now is a good time to have your carpeting cleaned. A good professional cleaning every 3-6 months, depending upon traffic, helps keep carpeting in good shape and looking new. Here are a few steps to take before you bring in a professional cleaner so that the process goes well.

Find a reputable firm: Recommendations from friends and a check with the better business bureau is strongly advised when having your carpets cleaned. See how long they’ve been in business, and what type of equipment they use. The best option is a truck-mounted deep steam cleaning system without soap, which can make a carpet dirty faster afterwards. Also, ask if they have professional blowers to help dry your carpet – many cleaning companies have those available for a nominal fee, and it makes drying your carpeting faster and easier.

Prepare your home for the cleaning: Remove all light pieces of furniture to locations with no carpet. Take breakables off any pieces too heavy to move. Pick up any fabric-based items such as curtains so that they don’t get wet (Either pin them up or lightly tie them to lift them off the floor. For any wood pieces too heavy to lift, place doubled-up wax paper squares under the legs – the wood coloring can come off on the damp carpet and cause a permanent stain.

If you have spots that you are concerned about, make sure to note them and point them out to the cleaner so that they are not missed. Some spots – particularly red ones – may not be removable by the cleaning firm.

Place pets in a separate room before the carpet cleaner comes. The equipment can scare your animals and the cleaner may be uncomfortable around your pets. Also, generally the front door stays open during the cleaning, allowing pets to slip out.

Finally, if you are happy with the work, let the cleaner know, and keep track of the company the next time you need your carpets cleaned.

Would you like to keep your floors looking new and limit carpet cleaning to once a year or less? Consider taking a no-shoes approach for family and guests. This is common in Japan, where many traditional homes require family and friends to leave their shoes at the door. Here in the U.S., it’s rare but still a good way to keep more dirt, germs and allergens outside.

If you would like to try this, plan on a few adjustments to make your no-shoes policy work well for visitors. Take a look at your main entryway. If possible, plan to include a bench for removing and replacing shoes, a shelf for slippers and shoe cubbies to hold guest footwear.

Give guests a heads up when you invite them over, so that they have an opportunity to pre-select the best footwear for their visit. You can encourage people to bring their own slippers if they choose, but let them know that you have a good selection of machine-washable slippers if they prefer not to wander your home in just socks.

It may take a while to get all family members to adjust to a shoeless home, but having a place to put their shoes by the door will help. When you invite guests, make sure you and your family members are also shoe free.

As people leave your home, be sure to thank them for supporting your no shoe home. You may find that many people actually enjoy attending events in your home wearing only socks or slippers, and you will have cleaner, nicer floors.

You might think polyester carpet is just polyester carpet, right? Not exactly. There is “old” polyester, PET polyester and PTT polyester. Most of today’s polyester carpets are made from PET fibers, which are basically produced from used plastic soda bottles. While it is true that the PET fibers of today are better than the “old” polyester, they still retain some of the performance challenges for which polyester has been known.

The main benefits of PET carpets are their low price and the fact that when new, they have an unusually soft and luxurious feel. You may hear carpet folks refer to this feel as the carpet having a “good hand.” Two other selling points for PET carpets are their amazing colorfastness and resistance to staining by water-based stain agents. The greatest complaints about PET carpets are their tendency to mat and crush quickly, and the difficulty of removing oil-based stains. In fact, oil-based stains left untreated can actually bond with the fiber and become permanent.

To learn more about carpet and other fibers, please click here.

The challenge was to find a replacement for silk. The United States was in a wartime economy, in the middle of WWII, and we were running out of silk to make parachutes and other military textiles. Embracing this challenge, the chemical and textile engineers at DuPont invented a synthetic replacement for silk, which came to be called nylon. Because of its strength, durability and flexibility, nylon fibers found their way into a host of different markets, including commercial and residential carpet manufacturing.

60 years later, the essential chemical structures of nylon remain exactly the same as they were in their wartime debut. What have made dramatic changes are the processes for dyeing, constructing and finishing carpet products. Decades of improvement in these technologies means significant gains in the way nylon carpets perform on your floors. Fortunately, these improvements extend to both cut-pile (plush) and loop pile carpet constructions.

Contributing significantly to nylon’s success as the world’s most specified fiber for carpet is its characteristic colorfastness. In particular, solution-dyed nylon – where the polymer is colored prior to its extrusion into fiber – is almost completely impervious to the effects of exposure to direct sunlight or bleach! Even when the fiber is dyed after extrusion, today’s advanced technologies for stain and soil protection keep nylon extremely colorfast.

Once constructed, installed and maintained properly, you can expect your nylon carpet to retain its original shape and appearance for many years. In fact, nylon carpet will never actually wear out . . . it just gets ugly once its useful life ends.

Over decades, carpet markets and styles have changed, but what hasn’t changed much is the available selection of carpet fibers! Today, just like 20 years ago, nylon and polyester are the sales leaders for residential carpet. Fortunately for us as consumers, their quality has continued to improve. Wool owns but a tiny piece of the market, yet remains the standard for luxury and comfort.

•    Nylon
o    Has led the residential sales market for 50 years
o    Looks good, resists stain, and performs extremely well at reasonable prices
o    Can be expected to last for 10 – 20 years with basic maintenance (when installed over a quality cushion)

•    Polyester
o    The “comeback kid” of carpet, has overcome a reputation of performing poorly
o    Now accounts for up to one-fourth of residential carpet sales
o    Performs well when constructed properly – with multiple plies and twists in the yarn

•    Wool
o    Known for its distinctive beauty, charm, color saturation and elegance for hundreds of years
o    Grows old gracefully, compared to nylon, which “uglies out” as it ages
o    Performs wonderfully for 20 years or more when given basic maintenance and installed over a quality pad.

Stay tuned for upcoming blog entries, where each of the individual fibers will be highlighted.