Hints for Restoring Pet Damaged Carpet

Hints for Restoring Pet Damaged Carpet - Pets are a joy to us; they are cute funny and relieve stress. But sometimes spot does just as his name suggests, he spots the carpet! Or your beloved chewy may get locked in the bedroom and decide to dig and chew his way out. All these activities lead to damaged carpet and potentially expensive repairs. Before you go carpet shopping here are a few tips that may save you a bundle.

Scratching the carpet at the edge of a door is a common occurrence in young animals or for animals that have been introduced to a new household. Cats and dogs have both been known to do this. There are two relatively simple measures to repair the damage. The first and easiest is to trim the frayed carpet back and then pull it up slightly and kick at the fold. This will give you an inch or less depending on the quality of the original installation. Lay the carpet back down and install threshold strip.

This type of carpet repair will only work if there is a small amount of damage. If however your precious jewel was a bit more energetic in digging you may have to be more extreme. A good cheap way to repair this would be to cut away the damaged carpet and replace the area with color coordinated tile. Small boxes can be purchased at your local home improvement store or even dollar stores. I have seen them here at Fred's Dollar store for as little as twenty dollars. Measure the area needing replaced to be sure you have enough tiles. I would cut back the carpet to the measure of full tiles, in other words if the area is a tile and a half go ahead and cut away the other half. Simply lay the tile according to box instructions, when finished you may need additional trim, carpet joiners will allow you to cover the edge of carpet and tile to prevent fraying. For these you will need to visit your hardware store or wal-mart. Not only will you have fixed your carpet inexpensively you will now have an area to take dirty shoes off on.

For stains and odors there are several options just shy of complete carpet replacement. For odors your only option is a thorough cleaning and even this may not be initially successful. Whether you choose the do-it-yourself method or hire it done be prepared to take a few steps to completely rid yourself of the odors. We had an area that the cat litter box sat and the odor was intense, once we had cleaned it thoroughly I then sat a small coffee can with a cup of vinegar in the area for twenty-four hours. Then for about a week after I used carpet fresh for pet odors, this finally solved the odor problem. When using a steam cleaner and chemicals always do a test spot in a closet or unnoticeable corner.

Stains are every carpet owner's nightmare but there are a couple of things you can do. First of course as with odor deep cleaning is in order, once complete if stains reappear you can try a stronger concentrate of cleaner. Again color test is essential; never apply anything to your carpet without it. One cheap but effective cleaner is mean green it will strip stains from almost any surface but it can also bleach the area or leave a light green tint so be careful. An option that a lot of landlords use is carpet dying. It is no longer available in my area but I know it is in others from an internet search. Carpet dying can be professional or do-it-yourself. I highly recommend professional if you have no experience in the area. From all accounts this is a method best used for small areas because getting consistent color in a large area is difficult and can be expensive. I have included a link on the pros and cons of carpet dying.