Tips and suggestions for upholstery cleaning

[KC-Chris]

Hey All,
I have the Gecko Spot and Upholstery machine in my arsenal. I want to start up-selling upholstery cleaning jobs while doing carpet. Can you give me your tips and advice for the up-sell? Also, what are the steps to clean upholstery? Pre-vac? Pre-spray (what do I use) then extract? Any upholstery material I should stay away from? What expectations do I set with my customers as far as dry-time and results? As always, I appreciate the help and feedback for this newbie! Thanks!

[Lounge Lizards]

If you want to start up-selling upholstery cleaning, I would suggest that you do the following:

Get training with a recognized upholstery cleaning trainer & organization.

Get training on removing spots, etc; from various fabrics.

Get various chairs from charity shops to practice your skills on, then donate them back to that store.

KNOW how to identify fabrics.

KNOW the problems that certain fabrics have & how to avoid owning a piece of furniture that you don't really want.

Practice, practice & practice some more.

Regarding cleaning solutions, I'll let the guys in your country answer that.

Offer to clean your relations upholstery at little cost.

Hope this helps.

[lee@deepclean.us.com]

Shorty is correct!
You need to invest in training to do it correctly.
If you don't you may be buying someones couch or chair.
Make the investment now and you will be happy you did.
It will pay for itself very very fast!

Lee

[encapman]

Excellent advice above. Most synthetic fabric is fairly straight forward. But you can also get into some blends, and natural fiber. It can be very easy to mess up a piece if you're not careful. And how do I know that?

Using a mitt with DS2, followed by a light rinse is a fairly fool proof method for synthetic pieces.  But as Shorty mentioned, getting some training to bring you up to speed and help your upholstery skillset would be very helpful.


Here are a couple of handy tools you may like to add to your arsenal...

A light scrub with DS2 using an upholstery mitt is a good way to loosen the soil. Brush with the lay of the fiber.
https://www.excellent-supply.com/8-inch-...p_479.html

A light scrub with the Rota Brush can work well on sturdy synthetic pieces. 
https://www.excellent-supply.com/Rota-Dr..._p_15.html

[KC-Chris]

Great advice and tips! I agree....practice makes better. I actually have a few couches and chairs in my basement that I can practice on. Thanks again everyone!

[Kenny Hayes]

I know this was from June, but here goes: If your doing commercial furniture, it's like Rick said, mostly straight forward. If you want to extract with an upholstery tool or encap. You can use encap punch and be safe. I use a 6 inch car buffer to encap. I spray encap punch and buff the tar (dirt) out of em. If I have 200-300 church chairs to clean, I've found,this,to be the fastest.