Mark, you and Joe M have what to me appear to be "amazingly fast" times for doing a 3 seater couch.
What do you use for a:
1) Vacuum and attachment. It's taking me 20 mins just to thorougly vacuum the couch. I'm using a small canister vac for uph. with the uph tool.
2) Sprayer. I've been using a hand mister, but maybe should switch to using a pump up sprayer?
3) How are your results? Much of the time is spent working on the stains which seem to mostly come out after a lot of back and forth scrubbing, but not after a quick once over....
And finally: how do you set the custies expectations for your uph work? Some seem to expect good as new and some assume most stains are permanent they just hope it will look better....
Well if you think I clean a sofa fast you should see me when I am having sex with my wife. 30 sec and its roll over and good night hun. LOL
I do sofas this way: a quick vac job can be about 5 min or so. I pre spray using a prochem pre spray, you can work it in with a horse hair brush on the head and arm rest are.
Mix up your cleaning soultion in a bucket into a foam and use a sea sponge to control the foam and do even strokes on the sofa. Then towel off using a white cotton towel. I then spray an acid rinse using pro chem acid rinse you then towel off again. put a fan blowing across the sofa for a few min.
You can also omitt the pre spray and the acid rinse and just use the foam to clean but if you do you will not get the item as clean.
This can take about 30 min or so to do and its a safe way.
Now I have never taken a course on upholstery and I know I should and you should as well. One day I hope to. (Right Derek).
As for the expectations I just tell the customers that there is no promise on how it will turn out but that I will try my best._
Oh and one more thing. There are some types of material that I will not touch, you need to know what to walk away form and what you can do. I have no problem cleaning your every day Raymour and Flanagan type sofa, as for silk or velvet items forget it.
Vacuuming seems to take between 10 t0 15 minutes. I use a Royal Dirt Devil porta-vac. I get stuff out of the crevices with my hands. (I keep hoping I'm not going to find the lost steak knife while I'm doing this "blind" search & removal.) Sometimes I'll use a small squeeze sprayer; other times, my regular 2-gallon pump sprayer. If using the pump sprayer, I'll spread towels all around the perimeter of the sofa.
On some jobs I'll use the small terrycloth stair pads by hand. On others, where the soil appears to be deeper, I'll use the small hand orbital stair tool.
