[james roffey]

Had an email tonight for cleaning in a two story flat cleaning carpets in two bedrooms and a lounge, what was odd was he also wants a quote to clean a "water stain at chest height across the width on a set of curtains that are two story's high" 
 Never cleaned curtains before   with the info i have what should i say to him, what problems could i encounter, ie could i just clean the water stain or would it leave another water mark where i have cleaned, bit unsure about this one.

[markpowell]

Offer to clean the carpets and advise him to take the curtains to the dry cleaners
MArk

[Paul Heath]

Advise him after you've cleaned the carpets, as i bet the dry cleaners also rent out RD 

[Nigel_W]

James

The process for removing the water staining would involve using oxidising or reducing bleaches to fade the water marks. You avoid leaving further water marks by working on small areas and using a hair drier to dry before you move on. Highly risky, time consuming and may or may not work. You could try a test patch in a hidden fold but on the whole I would recommend that you swerve the curtains. You need to practise using bleaching agents before you let loose on a very expensive set of curtains.

Dry cleaning will not remove the staining so don't recommend the dry cleaner route unless you know a specialist curtain cleaning company with the expertise to treat the stains separately. Most I know would not do this so it would be a waste of his money. It's ok if he decides to go that route but not on your recommendation.

Good luck


Nigel 

[Simon Gerrard]

James,

That's top class advice from Nigel.
I never take on things I am not 100% sure of, simply because if you take a risk and it goes wrong  - you own it and in my experience when that happens it is always to the customer who will take you to the cleaners.
Simon

[david hutchieson]

I get water stain removal request on curtains often with boats. Some can be taken out easily using an acidic rinse but the biggest difficulty is shrinkage. If the curtains have a backing I find that very often the front piece shrinks a little (3% or so) whilst the backing is fine.
Also it is great advice that water stains won´t come out with dry cleaning so you would need to put badly stained curtains in a normal laundry and even then the possibility of shrinkage is really high especially on cotton curtains.
Always let the client know that you expect shrinkage on curtains prior to starting cleaning by hand or taking to the laundry. Then the client has a choice, clean the curtains and have the possibility of shrinkage which can normally be made to look better by being re-hemmed or they can chuck them.
Hope this helps.

[expro]

What is the main fibre the curtains are made of?

[colin thomas]

i clean the carpets in a place like that, the lounge is at ground level overlooked by the kitchen which is one level up so the lounge curtains are double height, i can't remember off hand what the guy paid for the curtains but i know it was a lot and i wouldn't want to own them if anything went wrong!
colin

[garybristow]

I had a four shop dry cleaning bus in london for 25 years.you can slightly fade water marks,but unless they came to us still wet,youve no chance of getting it out.if they are washable curtains you have a chance also if your not charging much for them dont bother!!
just another piece of advice,if anyone does shrink curtains,some (but not many) dry cleaners may have a sandershade stretching machine that can work in a lot of cases.it basically steams under tension
i had one it works only 75% of the time        good luck
gary bristowclean

[james roffey]

Thanks for the rapid response guys, i will try and get to view the job and once i get my foor in the door explain the difficulties of the curtains that way i will probably still get to do the carpets dont want to talk myself out of doing the carpets.