Dear Jenny: Cleaning Upholstery

Dear Jenny:

I noticed in this post, you mentioned you used outdoor velvet on your new upholstery. How amazing must that be! I wondered if the linen on your new gray sofa was also indoor/outdoor? If not, I would love to know what cleaning supplies you use on the upholstered pieces in your house. I have four children and I feel like there might be something to those clear plastic covers they used to put on everything back in the 50s!! Ha!!

Thanks,
Kelly P

Hi Kelly! I am the HUGEST (and completely un-sponsored) fan of Folex upholstery and carpet cleaner. It is so incredibly easy to use. Basically you dose the stain with the spray, let it sit for a sec, and then sort of rub it in with your finger. The stain will disappear before your eyes and won't damage your carpet or fabric! The best part is there is no rinsing required at all. You can blot up the cleaning liquid with a towel if you want though. Fast and so easy!!

Want to see it in action? I got this adorable little kids settee at a flea market last year. I love the chippy guilding on the frame.

The upholstery is really old, but it's still in good shape. I'm waiting to change out the fabric until I have the other fabrics in the girls room nailed down. So really, I hadn't done anything to the piece other than clean it since buying it last year. It held up well for a while, but then recently we had some play dates at our house and there were a couple of messes on the piece:

Pen is always the hardest thing for me to get out of fabric. Here's the 'during' shot, after a couple sprays of Folex. You can see the black ink is starting to disappear:

About 20 seconds later, the pen was completely gone.

The whole piece cleaned up beautiful (with almost no smell) in about five minutes.

It was wet for a couple hours, but the stains were totally gone after the cleaner dried.

I'm glad it cleaned up so well so we can keep using it until it's reupholstered. It really is one of my favorite little pieces of furniture. It's just the right scale for a kids room and is a perfect prop for impromptu photo shoots of sisters (that love each other a lot).

Do you readers have any tried and true upholstery/carpet cleaning tools or products to share with Kelly?

Dear Jenny: What would you do with this coffee table?

One of my old clients, Sheila, emailed me with a photo of this coffee table she had purchased off Craigslist for her mom's home a while back. I saw it in person the last time I was visiting. The tortoise shell bamboo is really cool, but the glass panes are really bad (a completely unfortunate bird scene).

Sheila wanted advice about what to do to replace the bird scenes. I think just regular old mirror would be bright and pretty. Antiqued mirror or leafed glass would be nice also.

Another option is painting new glass panes a pretty color. Recently I saw this really (REALLY) expensive but incredibly beautiful credenza at John Rosselli at the D&D. It's a brass frame with reverse painted glass panes (the aqua parts) by Lona Design.

I love the effect of the reverse painted glass! It's glossy and watery and has great depth. These are the color samples Lona Design offers. And you can see better here how pretty the aqua color is (to the right of the card) on the credenza. Wouldn't this color be amazing paired with the tortoise shell bamboo frame on Sheila's table?

To achieve this look with Sheila's coffee table, I would get glass cut to size (Lowe's does this for super cheap!) and then use spray paint, or regular latex paint and a foam roller, to apply color to the underside. I would add glaze for a more transparent look.

The technique would work on paned cabinet doors, glass shelving and any glass topped tables. Which, lucky for us, Craigslist and thrift stores are absolutely chock full of!

Dear Jenny: Can I Use a Rug on my Wall-to-Wall Carpet?

Here's a question from a reader that I know many of you living in newer homes have asked yourself:

Hi Jenny,
I am helping with a friend on her house (just a few ideas for her girl's nursery) & I suggested that she put a rug on top of her carpet. She declined & I persisted. :) She finally said she thinks it looks tacky & cheap. Oh no! I have never thought that and I'm wondering if I'm way off-base. Does it just depend on the type of rug (weight of it) or do rugs on top of carpet always look tacky?

I'm going to open this one up to the comments section, because I think the vote is going to be pretty split. Also my answer is a pretty lame one: it depends. I think overall, I prefer no area rugs on top of wall-to-wall carpeting, at least carpeting that has a pile greater than 1/2". I feel like the area rug never sits right on top of shaggier carpet.

Here are some examples that I do like in kids rooms. Notice how low the pile is with all of these carpets:

Serena and Lily


House and Home Magazine


unknown


Marie Claire Maison


Coastal Living


Angie Hranowsky (thanks Vinyasa Mama for the source!)

And of course, I LOVE the look of an area rug layered on top of natural fiber rugs or flooring.

Lonny


O at Home


Country Living


Peter Dunham

When we rented a house in Delaware last year, our bedrooms upstairs had carpeting and I opted out of floor rugs. I actually felt like it was a bit of a bonus. Rugs are EXPENSIVE!! If you were counting on the rug to add some pattern or to define the space, use the hundreds of dollars you're saving to invest in a pair of benches with a great pattern. Or amazing window treatments.

What do you think, readers? Do any of you have area rugs layered on top of your carpet? How is it working for you?

P.S. If you have a very general question about home decor that you would like to see answered here, please email your submission to jenny @jennykomenda.com. Please keep the emails brief and remember that the question should be relevant to most LGN readers.

**PPS As I was waiting for the photos to upload for this post, I was lost in thought, staring at my desk. Suddenly I realized that what I was staring at was an area rug on top of high pile carpet on the cover of this month's Elle Decor! Looks great here: