clean spots on my carpet!!

suzanna

i have been reading this forum for a while and am amazed at all the ideas and knowedge, so i would like to ask for your help.

i have a beige carpet in my lounge (silly mistake i know) and up until now i have used vanish carpet cleaner the type you wisk and use the foam and it has worked fine (or so i thought)

Then one day i ran out of the vanish and brought some 1001 spray carpet cleaner and got to work spraying all the little marks that were all over the carpet, i then took a step back to appreciate my handy work and was stunned to find that the 1001 carpet cleaner cleaned all to well and i now have about 30-35 really clean spots on my carpet (i dont remember it being that light) and it looks really silly and the rest of the carpet looks dirty. To make matters worse i have moved the funiture around and now i have some parts of the carpet where the pile is like new and other bigger parts that are really flat.

has anyone got any tips and ideas other than buying a new carpet on getting the pile back up and getting it the same colour all over??


ever hopeful??

Suzanna
l

squeaky

Ouch.

Well, when all else fails getting a professional carpet cleaner in is much cheaper than buying a new carpet.

As for the all else...?

If you have a look at the "Cleaning" section in the "MEGA" index sticky at the top of the board there are a few ideas on carpets that might help, and tomorrow morning when the day shift turns up there'll be plenty more advice.

Good luck

nabowla

Ooh. This has me worried. I've got a beige carpet too and it's beginning to look a bit grubby. So, I bought some of the 1001 Carpet Shampoo - large area cleaner. According to the instructions I'm supposed to mix it up, spread the foam on the carpet & clean. I was going to try it this evening but now I'm worried that I'll end up with a spotty carpet. And I really can't take the risk as I'm in a rented flat so the carpet's not mine to ruin. Has anyone else used 1001 carpet shampoo? Did it work?

As for your carpet, Suzanna, the only thing I can think of is cleaning the entire carpet somehow. Have you got one of those steam wallpaper strippers that can also be used as a carpet steamer? If not, do you have a friend who might have one (or even a fancy semi-professional carpet steamer) that you could borrow? It might just get the pile back up and the colour even.

apprentice_tycoon

There is a thread on lifting the flat pile, so that problem may be solved.

I think that you have 2 choices with the cleaned areas - the first is to wait until the clean marks get grubby again, then they will blend in or clean the whole carpet so in theory it will all be the same colour.

suzanna

i did think about doing the whole carpet with the spray but it would use up so many bottles doing it like that and would take ages spraying section by section. I do have a vax (i know i should have used this in the first place but it dosnt clean the stubbon little stains and the spray seemed so easy and quick) i was thinking about pouring the 1001 into the vax and hoping for the best???

I do have a friend with a wall paper steamer and will have a go with that at the weekend.

nabowla, i suggest doing a small spot first to see what happens as i am now the but of all the family jokes. I am able to see the funny side sort of and in some lights it dosnt seem to bad but then you look again and its awful.

Helen_from_yorkshire

Has anyone used a wallpaper stripper/steamer to clean their carpets, if so, what were the results? Didn't realise it was possible to use this to clean carpets.

apprentice_tycoon

If you are willing to get your Vax out I think that it would do the job for you. I'm not sure if the 1001 is suitable, unless it actually says so on the label. I have used my Vax without any soap at all because there is often a soapy residue in the carpet (particularly in yours with all those newly cleaned spots) and the carpet will come up much cleaner with the warm water on it's own. Just the suction from the Vax shampoo head will lift the dirt out of the rest of the carpet and the clean spots will look less stark.

nabowla

I haven't used a wallpaper stripper/carpet steamer myself but I have seen them on sale in B&Q for around £30-ish (I think that was in a sale). The one I saw came with some sort of adapter (a bit like a vacuum head) to convert it into a carpet steamer. I'm not sure whether using a wallpaper stripper without an adapter would work.

tru

I've got a light beige carpet too, I clean it with a steam cleaner. The last time I did it, I added some soda crystals to the water, it worked really well. Dunno if it'll eventually ruin the cleaner though

IvanOpinion

We have tried Vanish (smells fowl), 1001 and various other bits and bobs with varying degrees of success. The one item we have had quite a bit of success with on several occasions (not always) is 'No Wet Wonder Foam' (the one you see advertised on TV all the time). We had a very bad 'butter stain' on a carpet (the dog kept dropping her early morning slice of toast) and had tried everything with no success - a friend then gave us a bottle of NWWF and after a couple of goes the carpet came up like new (pity about rest of the carpet though) ... ever since then we always keep a bottle handy (as I said it doesn't always work but it has been more reliable than anything else we have tried).

I know it is not exactly money saving but it may be worth a try (it is probably much cheaper than a carpet). It comes with a little brush/roller thing that allows you to cover large areas reasonably quickly.

Ivan