Doing It Myself Makes Me Happy!

And it also saved me $300.  Not bad for around three hour’s work, or $100 an hour. Hey, that’s lawyer pay!

As you can see from the picture, we have a beautiful Oriental rug in our entryway.  We bought it 15+ years ago in one of those infamous “going out of business” sales that seem to be a constant event in rug stores.  This one was happening because (we were told, anyway) the owner had leukemia and was having to sell the store.  Maybe it was true; I certainly don’t want to sound unsympathetic.  Be that as it may, we took some time going through the massive piles on the showroom floor and spotted this one.  I fell in love on the spot.  The colors were so different from the typical blues and reds.  And it was only $1,200.00, which I think was a pretty good deal.  I loved looking at all the different colors, all so artistically combined.

But, like everything else in life, the rug needed maintenance.  I was pretty good about keeping it vacuumed, and I was careful always to vacuum with the nap as I’d been told to do.  Inevitably, however, especially after we put it right in the traffic path of people coming in the front door in this house, it got pretty dirty.  I wish I had taken a “before” picture of it; you could see plainly that the side where most people walked on it was especially filthy.  I kept thinking that I ought to get it cleaned.  I asked a guy who had some expertise for his recommendation on rug cleaners.  Finally, right before we left on our trip, I called the guy he’d mentioned.  How much would it cost?  $5.50/square foot, since the rug has silk as well as wool fibers.  So right at $300.  That was one-quarter of what we’d paid for the rug in the first place.  Jim said to go ahead, but I was a little reluctant.  If it had been some museum-quality item worth thousands of dollars, maybe so.  But to pay that much for cleaning our little bargain seemed kind of excessive.