By David Holmes
VICTORIA – From heirloom to contemporary area rugs add color, comfort and a distinctive feel to any room. But over time everyday traffic, pets and life’s countless mishaps can transform any treasured possession into a worn and soiled eyesore. But thanks to the skills, equipment and specialized processes provided by Luv-A-Rug Services Inc. what might seem at first sight a lost cause can be safely and relatively quickly returned to its former glory.
“I starting cleaning carpets with my Dad (Gordon Roberts) back in 1971 when I was just a kid, so you’d really have to say that I’ve quite literally grown up in this business,” explained Luv-A-Rug’s owner and operator Stephen “Dusty” Roberts.
Unlike with mobile rug cleaning services, Luv-A-Rug specializes in the cleaning and restoration of area rugs, rather than the wall to wall carpeting typically found in homes and apartments. With a team of 10 and operating from a 2,250 square foot facility at 445 Beta Street in Victoria, Luv-A-Rug is equipped with commercial systems that can thoroughly and gently wash any style of area rug or carpet – from modern office rugs, to the most delicate and valued Persian carpets.
“You’d have to say that I fell in love with rugs at an early age and wanted to learn everything about them, so I opened my first rug cleaning specialty business in 1996. While we certainly have worked for businesses much of the work we do is for individual homeowners, on treasured Oriental rugs and even the heirloom that someone’s grandmother cherished but is now tattered and stained. For me restoring those family treasures is especially satisfying and is one of my favorite assignments,” Dusty explained.
More than a cleaning service Luv-A-Rug is unique in the Victoria marketplace in that it can also restore damaged, worn and generally hard used rugs, in some cases returning them to near new condition. Thanks to the time-honored skills of its Persian-trained carpet technicians Luv-A-Rug has the expertise to carry out authentic hand repairs to even the most valuable antique carpeting.
A partial list of the repair and restoration services being offered include carpet binding, fringe removal, cotton, silk and wool fringe repair, carpet fringe replacement, serging or binding the edges of tattered rugs and even the reweaving of holes and other damage. Over the years Luv-A-Rug has successfully worked on carpets that were literally hundreds of years old, and valued in the thousands.
“We have weavers who work on-site, we do restorative rug washing – meaning we literally wash the rug all of the way through. Basically if a rug can be rolled up and transported we can clean, repair and restore it. We can also arrange pick-up and delivery, which is something we’ve done all over Vancouver Island for bigger orders, but typically customers bring their rugs to us to be cleaned. We unload the rugs once they get here so the owner never has to worry about that,” he stated.
Luv-A-Rug was recently recognized in the media and the local community when it took it upon itself to clean the more than 400 rugs found within School District 61’s elementary schools, an approximately $90,000 project, at no cost. The reason for the unparalleled generosity was that while the District had spent millions building schools, it had stopped cleaning rugs as a cost saving measure – a health and safety issue that Dusty found unacceptable.
“We stepped in when we heard that had happened, that simply wasn’t good enough and as it was getting close to Christmas anyway we said we’d wash the rugs for free. We thought there’d be a few dozen rugs – we certainly didn’t expect it to be more than 400. My staff all stepped up the plate, worked right through their Christmas break and got the job done,” Dusty recalled.
“The cool thing is the School District then changed its mind, went back to vacuuming the carpets every day and now the kids can work and play on clean carpets. Sure it might have embarrassed the District a little but the results were worth the effort.”
Part of the community for decades, Luv-A-Rug Services has a passion for carpet cleaning, and a love for breathing new life into vintage stained and worn rugs – enhancing the quality of a home’s indoor environment and preserving important pieces of a family’s history. They even have a convenient program where you can have damaged rugs restored to their original splendor.
“The message we want to get out is fairly straight forward – we’re the people who restore, wash and repair specialty rugs. We also offer a pet odor removal guarantee. Once we’re done the rug will have zero smell left in it, and it will never smell like it’s been covered up with some sort of deodorant. We guarantee it,” Dusty said.
To get an instant estimate by Luv-A-Rug on the cleaning or repair of your rug, just text a picture of your rug with your cell phone to (778) 533-7847.
