I have been a little busy and I wanted to contribute something as I have a few little things I do that work well and may help somebody out.
Get one of these.
It's a mag wheel cleaning brush, very soft and has bristles all the way around its' circumference. So you can use it at any angle, full 360 degree agitation.
The next thing you need is good chems. Not 1 bottle of something, but a good solid suite of chems you can use to solve many different problems.
with lots of chemical treaters you always have the right thing to use and can avoid the situation where you're trying to use something that is ill suited or a compromise.
Towels.......... Lots and LOTS of white cotton towels. I cannot stress enough how much hand towelling I do on my upholstery work. It just rips soil out and rubs treaters in. A Mag wheel brush, good encapsulating pre-spray or dry foam cleaner, solvent spotter and bucket full of towels should be right up there with your extractor, hoses and water.
With these simple manual tools you can make even the nastiest pieces of furniture look almost new in a good number of instances.
This is an example of two such jobs I've done over the past few months.
Now it has been sprayed with Aussie Encappa, a locallly made encapsulating multipurpose fabric cleaner. It can be used as stand alone encap cleaner for carpet or upholstery or as a pre-spray for extraction. I have solvent spotted the pice and sprayed it generously with the Aussie Encappa. Scrubbed it well with the mag wheel brush and towelled it extensively. Out of the frame there is a pile of 12 cotton towels and they are just black with soil.
Now after hot water extraction
Remember to leave your customer their free gift on the piece to marry together their surprise of the result with the bonus of a freebie.
Same story here, it's just this one is a bar stool from a tyre fitters garage. In Australia we have a national franchise of tyre and wheel garages called "Beaurepairs". Their corporate colours are blue and this RUDE shade of orange. I was in my local garage getting some tyres. The guys andI were negotiating a package deal for him to rotate and ballance my wife's vehicle's wheels and to to some camber and castor adjustments to the front end.
He said how much he wanted, I said "what about I clean these stools up for you, they look really sad and that takes away from your customer greeting area's appearance a lot?"
He said "IF you can clean them, and actually make them look good, we can just exchange services".
Didn't bat an eyelid, just loaded up 4 stools and took them home overnight. Using the same chemicals and process as before this is what happened.
After vacuuming they looked like this......
Some solvent spotting, pe-spray, extensive towelling and extraction they came out like this.
And after some post extraction towelling they finally arrived back at the shop like this.
Be premium, don't cut corners, don't rely on the machine to do what takes a human hand and eye, and brain and patience and skill. And charge accordingly, you'll be famous.
Grant
