hiring a non-perfumey but really great carpet cleaner in NC

December 21, 2008 7:16 AM

I want to hire a professional carpet cleaner in Chapel Hill / Durham, NC. Requirements: getting hard-to-clean, oddly-stained, cheap berber carpet looking good; strongly prefer no scent left behind; would love to get this done soon. Any suggestions?

I have an appointment with "Stanley Steemer" on Tuesday; the lady on the phone seemed to have no clue about whether there would be a perfumey smell left behind, or what kinds of stains they could remove.

My stains include grayish areas where I tried to remove smaller stains. Ugh. Not sure what's going on there. Original stains are generally from cat puke...

I know berber is hard to clean. Probably nothing special to be done there. I'm not fond of this carpet, but I do want to live somewhere that looks and is clean and doesn't smell perfumey.

My limited experience with the world of professional large item cleaning (car, previous attempt on the carpet) has generally smelled awful afterward. Are there any companies, or ways to research, that will lead to less scented results?

Can anyone recommend some specific service?

Thanks.

posted by amtho to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

I don't know of a specific service - hopefully someone will - but I know of a tack you could take in finding one. Try looking through resources for people with severe allergies, or ask about any treatments for people with chemical allergies that Stanley Steamer might have. Because a lot of sensitivities are to the chemicals used in fragrancing just about everything, a lot of even the mainstream companies have special low-and-no fragrance alternatives onhand if you ask for them.
posted by medea42 at 11:33 AM on December 21, 2008

Check Angie's List?
posted by yoga at 11:43 AM on December 21, 2008

Followup: I dug out this month's Angie's List magazine, & it lists the following 2 companies (there are more, probably, but these specific two had ads), neither of which mention anything about odor:

Clean Home 919-744-7441 (10% off for Angie's List members)
Carpet Dryclean 919-878-0748 (coupon for $15 off a $150 minimum job)

Email's in the profile - if you want I can send you the magazine so you can clip the coupon.
posted by yoga at 1:37 PM on December 21, 2008

I just hire a professional carpet cleaning machine from the local supermarket. This may be a local thing, but most of our supermarkets hire these out -- ask at the customer inquiries desk. You pay around $20 + cost of the cleaning fluid. You get to keep it for a few days (a long weekend, if I remember rightly). You can also get upholstery accessories for these machines. The plus side is that you can go over and over the spots that "professional" cleaners tend to leave in situ (e.g. pet stains or food spills that did not get mopped up in time). Remember that professional cleaners just hire someone off the street and use the exact same machines.
posted by Susurration at 2:21 PM on December 21, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks, guys!
posted by amtho at 4:51 PM on December 21, 2008