[Jeremy]

My Team cleaned a white lounge suite yesturday. After I had seen the lounge suite, I promised the customer that we had cleaned many of these (which we have) and that there was unlikely to be a problem.

To my horror, I was called back. All the stain from the wooden frame has bled through. Can anything be done to fix this. What could have been done differently

Regards
Jeremy

[gwrightson]

Jeremy,
You state you have cleaned plenty of those suites !!!
stained wooden frames , a disaster waiting to happen if you do not take precautions.
it seems to be the frames have been wet and transfered, and /or the solution has spread from material to the frame , causing the stain to transfer.
In answer to your questions. I doubt very much can be done now if its wood staining, even on carpets this can be a no no, especialy on a more delicate fabric. having said that if you are going to end up owning it you can at least try 1 or 2 things, nothing to lose .
My first suggestion would be , heat transfer redrx, then sodium meta, if this fails a bleaching agent, you never know you may be lucky

in answer to you other question.
Yes !  quite definatly you could have prevented this.
protect all the exposed wooded areas from pre spray and rinse, do not wet the areas of any material touching the wood and that cannot be removed, and finaly ensure rapid  and complete drying .

Good luck
geoff

[dave123]

with these types of suite it's a good idea to coat the wood with vaseline to protect them from getting wet,then clean it off when the job is completed .

[markpowell]

Sorry to say your chances of removing these wood stains are extremely slim if not impossible.
Mark

[jon777]

You got to take this one on the chin.

We all make mistakes just make sure you learn from it.

I dont think I would have taken the job unless the client was willing to pay for the extra work involved in protecting the wooden areas.   Thats all very well saying that after the event though.

Like I said learn from it, pass i over to your insurance company (thats what they are there for) and move on.

[Ken Wainwright]

Jeremy

When you say that the stain from the wood frame has bled through, do you mean the decoratively finished and exposed wood, or the wood beneath the padding? They can be two completely different things.

Safe and happy cleaning
Ken

[Jeremy]

There is no exposed wood. This is from beneath the padding.

The problem is that we have cleaned a number of lounge suites similar to this.

The issue for me is, how to prevent this from happening again. How do we know which lounge suites may bleed through and which will not. Is our cleaning process floored, where the chemicals too harsh causing the stain to move from the wood, did we over wet the couch.

All I know is that the couch is very old, but was re-upholstered about 5 years ago.

Jeremy

[Doug Holloway]

Hi Jeremy

The only way to be sure is to use a much lower moisture approach, either a foam or light spray , work in with microfibre cloth and towell off.

Cheers

Doug

[robert meldrum]

In addition to Dougs comments, I'd add glides, or poly strips. J K has a handy product for this purpose, sticky on one side and strong enough to pull the furniture back after cleaning .

Always have a few Asda type poly bags in the van " just in case "

[Ken Wainwright]

Without seeing the suite, my thoughts are Jeremy, that the suite would need to be seriously overwet for this to happen. Also, I am not aware of any manufacturer who will spend the time and money to stain some timbers that are going to be covered and out of sight.

I have a couple of thoughts though. Could the suite have been a re-wrap with the new fabric fitted over the old and possible soiled original covering?  Also a consideration is that the cushioning between the face fabric and timber frame is either soiled or has been treated with an unstable dye.

What about piping? is this a different colour if present, or what is it's core fibres?

Is the staining just on the body or also the cushions? Does the staining show close to seams, contact areas or randomly? Photos may help.

The wood stain theory just doesn't seem right to me, it's more likely to be corner cutting during manufacture.

Please keep us informed.

Safe and happy cleaning
Ken

[derek west]

got any piccies or can you get some?
derek

[Jeremy]

Ken - Thanks for the advice.

I will post some photo's when the lounge suite is brought back to the workshop.

I believe the techy overwet the couch firstly, which I think is the underlying cause of the problem. The stains are only on the frame and not were the padding is. Mainly prominent at the back of the couch along the wooden beem close to the bottom and slightly discoloured in other places where the material sits tightly against the frame.

I spoke to my insurance company yesturday on the off chance that we are covered for this. It seems we are. If necessary, I will submit a claim and see if they pay.

[Nigel_W]

It is possible that the original sofa had exposed (stained) wooden parts that were covered up when the sofa was re-upholstered. This would explain the staining of the wood. If this is the case it was a disaster waiting to happen and most people would not have spotted this danger.  I am not sure where the liability would lie if this was the case. Many years ago I had one where exactly that had happened. The original sofa had wooden arms that had been recovered with fabric and a thin layer of padding. The wood dye bled through to the new fabriC I recovered the sofa for the client at my cost but I felt pretty unhappy as in this case it was impossibe to spot. You can get a similiar problem when the upholsterer writes in pen or coloured chalk on the underside of the fabric. It bleeds through as soon as you clean. I wonder if the upholstery cleaner is liable for this? Does anyone know?

Nigel

[Doctor Carpet (Ret'd)]

Nigel

I remember being told on my Prochem course 9 years ago that the cleaner would NOT  be responsible if the upholster's marks bled through.

The instructor said that as it was sealed in side we could not be expected to open up seams etc on the off chance of finding them.

I have no reason to doubt that this reasoning is still valid.

(It happened to me once about 8 years ago. Scared the life out of me. Just told the client the above. They weren't happy but accepted my explanation. They did pay me as well although needless to say I have never been invited back there since.)

[Ken Wainwright]

Thanks for the extra information Jeremy.

My opinion based upon the information available is along the same lines as Nigel and Roger's.  There is no practical, non-damaging way to test for this problem. For whatever reason, the suite has been upholstered in a way which makes it unfit for purpose as it is not possible to clean the fabric safely. It's possible with any flame retardent treatment it may have that it is also not suitable for dry cleaning, which may also cause the same colour migration problem.

It would appear that your technician has followed normal best practice procedures. Whether or not the fabric was over wet, the problem could have occured regardless.

Having said all that, if the transfer had become apparent whilst your tech was on site, he/she should have stopped immediatley.

Safe and happy cleaning
Ken

[murky]

I tend to agree with Ken, we had a similar a few years ago, there was a 'grease' stain on the head of a parker knoll style chair, no matter what we did it kept coming back after a day or so.

Got my upholsterer to open it and turned out in the end it had been re upholstered, but they had merely covered the old chair, they didn't strip the old material off hence the bleed through onto the head area, it was the old material underneath.

Murky

[Jeremy]

Got the couch back and had a good look. Sorry I didn't take any pictures.

My senior techy (15year experience) said that this couch has been seriously over wet and immediately indicated that too much pre-spary had been used.

He cleaned the couch again but with plain water (old school techy) and the couch transformed. Once dry, I noticed that there were still some wood stain marks.

I asked that he clean it again with all fibre rinse and there are now only one or two brown marks.

I have just sprayed these with some Yellow RX and can see already that the marks are dissappearing.

The marks where so bad, that I believed them to be wood stains. I have never seen cellulose browning so bad.

Needless to say. the techy has been pulled off the team for re-training.