This is driving me insane. The dog peed in the corner of our new carpet, I immediately took out the detergent and warm water and scrubbed the hell out of it. I dried it with a fan and it’s been dry for days.
But the carpet isn’t the same anymore - the area where the mess was, the carpets edges are now wavy/ruffled and I can’t make them lay flat on the ground at all. I put some heavy objects in place, to keep the carpet flat and I left them there over the weekend. Unfortunately, when I removed them, the carpet gets ruffled again.
Please give me any advice you think may be useful, as I don’t want to experiment now and make things any worse than they already are. Just to be clear, I want the corner of the carpet to lay flat on the floor again.
You may have shrunk it with the water and detergent, and if it was previously tacked down to the tack strip (it probably was), you pulled it from the tacks.
I would call a few local carpeting/flooring companies and see if you can get some quotes on having a professional come out to stretch and re-tack it. I have no idea how much this costs but there are special tools and special skills needed to do this right.
I was told by a professional carpet cleaning guy that you should never put soap on a carpet. You should clean it with steam. Get one of those little steam machines and a little carpet cleaning machine (both hand held). Steam the spot and use water in the cleaner’s reservoir. It worked better than when we used a Rug Doctor on the spots.
Not sure anything will help now, short of professional help, but in the future, just get a lot of cool or room-temperature water, and soak the hell out of the spot. Like, pour enough on that it starts to pool on top. Then get a bunch of clean towels and blot it up. Don’t rub, just blot. That’ll get up most pet stains. If it doesn’t, repeat with oxy-clean mixed with water. Not a lot of oxy-clean, just a little. I’ve never not been able to get out pet stains with this method, and I have light colored carpeting and have raised several puppies.
My technique is nearly the same, with emphasis on the blotting, not scrubbing part. I’ll blot the area with paper towels until they’re no longer picking up the urine, then spray it with a mix of water and commercial pet-stain remover. I’ll continue blotting with the paper towels until they’re picking up the dampness of the water mixture without discoloring.
For what it’s worth, the blotting technique was told to me by a place that specialized in selling, maintaining, and cleaning high-quality oriental rugs (ie, NOT the places in the strip malls where the rugs are priced at $20K but perpetually marked down to $1500). They told me that if that technique doesn’t work on carpeting and rugs, the next step was to call a professional, because anything more risks damaging the carpeting.
Interesting factoid: they also told me the only stain they were not able to get out of a carpet was orange soda. So avoid drinking orange soda on rugs that you value.
Tip for dealing with pee, or actually any liquid: salt. Do NOT use paper towels or anything else that involves pressing. Just pour a boatload of salt. (And I mean a boatload: if you anticipate dealing with this with puppies or something, lay in supplies of bags of it.) You will see the liquid being pulled into the salt immediately. Keep pouring it on until the visible surface of the pile of salt is dry, no liquid is being pulled in. Then CAREFULLY scoop the majority of it up with a dustpan avoiding putting any pressure on the area, and pour on a bunch more. Then leave it for a couple of hours.
Scoop up the majority of the salt, vaccuum the rest, then steam clean. Or, if you’re concerned about odors and “re-pee” pour some vinegar on the pee area before you steam it, but after you’ve removed all the pee salt. Use a fair amount, and let it sit for half an hour. Then remove it with salt, the way you did the pee, then steam.
When a carpet is manufactured, it is treated with a coating to make it easier to clean. When you use a chemical it will strip the coating off. You should only use hot water and blot the area clean. This works when you catch the stain immediately. As far as a stain with a serious smell, the best thing to use that does NOT strip chemicals off the carpet and is a natural product to kill the urine smell is to use vinegar. 1/4 cup to one gallon is the amount to use. Keep it in a spray bottle and handy for any other accidents (be sure to shake it before each use to mix it).
Your scrubbing is what did it in, and I don’t think there’s a way to undo it. You pulled the nap out of place. Gnap? Knap? I don’t know I never read the damned word, I just cleaned carpets professionally for a while so I heard my boss use it. We used a shampooer but it’s nowhere as harsh as hand scrubbing. If there was a urine stain we used Nature’s Miracle, blotted and dried, shampooed, then blotted and dried again. Never had a complaint.
I guess I screwed it up with my detergent + scrubbing. I’ve been taught that that’s the “way” to do it, heh.
So I got it, lots of water and blotting next time. I can try the salt thing. The vinegar idea sounds weird because I wouldn’t want the carpet to smell of vinegar… but since it’s such a recommended technique there must be something to it.
