Boonville Heirlooms, Handled Gently: Rug Cleaning by Hand 23 Road Miles East
Boonville still has houses that were standing before the Civil War, and older houses tend to hold older rugs. At our Columbia rug studio, Rob tests and dusts each one and hand washes the ones that can take it, and nothing happens to a family piece until you’ve heard the plan.
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Rug Cleaning · Boonville
Who cleans old and heirloom rugs for Boonville?
MaxCare’s rug studio at 1218 Clinkscales Road in Columbia, about 23 road miles from Boonville City Hall: Bingham Road to I-70 East, exit 124 at Stadium Boulevard, then Business Loop 70 West. Rob Decker, our lead rug cleaner, inspects and dusts every rug and hand washes the ones that can take it. Carry yours in, or ask about pickup.
A few Boonville houses predate the Civil War by decades. Hain House at Fourth and Chestnut was built around 1836 by George Hain, a Swiss immigrant blacksmith, with walls of hewn walnut logs, and the brick Greek Revival Thomas Nelson House on Tenth Street went up in 1843. Census estimates for 2020 to 2024 count 807 Boonville homes built in 1939 or earlier, close to one in four. Older houses tend to hold older rugs: hand-knotted wool, a runner from a grandparent’s hall, a piece nobody can date. That’s why our rug cleaning starts with a fiber ID test, pH readings and a dye test, long before any water. The rest of what we do for the town is on our Boonville page.
About Boonville
Getting a Boonville house ready for company or the Christmas Homes Tour?
Plan the rugs early. The Friends of Historic Boonville list a Christmas Homes Tour in December, and family visits stack up around the same weeks. We won’t promise a date for a rug, since its wash plan and drying decide the timing, so call in the fall if it has to be back on the floor before guests arrive.
The Friends of Historic Boonville, a group formed in 1971 that has about 350 members, own Thespian Hall, the Old Cooper County Jail (finished in 1848) and Hain House, where day-of tour tickets are sold. Homes on a tour get looked over room by room, and a rug in the front hall is hard to miss.
Missouri’s National Register list for Cooper County names 30 Boonville entries, from lettered historic districts to single homes like the Andrews-Wing, Morton-Myer and Fessler-Secongost houses. If your rug came from one of those houses, or any old one, tell us. Rob builds every wash plan around the rug’s construction, condition and age, and the odds that its dyes will bleed.
Bringing a Boonville rug to the studio
- Lift the furniture off and roll the rug up. If it’s too big or heavy to load, ask us about pickup when you call.
- Run a tape down both sides and across both ends. A hand-knotted rug is never perfectly square, so a few inches of difference is normal, not damage.
- Driving it over? From Main Street, take Bingham Road out to I-70 East, go about 17.5 miles to exit 124 at Stadium Boulevard, then turn right on Business Loop 70 West and right again on Clinkscales Road.
- Bring what you know: who owned it, about how many years it’s been in the family, where it was bought and any earlier cleaning or repair. Point out spots a pet used, too.
- Call (573) 817-2540 to set a drop-off time. The shop is open Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, and on Saturdays by appointment.
FAQ
Rug Cleaning in Boonville: Questions
An old rug from a Boonville house curls at the corners and won't lie flat. Can you help?
Often, yes. After the wash, a rug like that can be blocked in our dry room, which works it back toward flat and square when that’s possible. Don’t expect a perfect rectangle, though. Hand-knotted rugs are never perfectly square, and they shouldn’t be. Rob will tell you what to expect once he’s had the rug on the shop floor.
I inherited a rug from a Boonville relative and have no idea what it is. Can you tell me?
Rob offers informal appraisals for a nominal fee. You learn what the rug is, its background, its current retail price and a short history of the culture it came from. That tells you if you’re holding a treasured piece or a well-loved machine-made rug, and how it’s built also shapes how it should be washed.
The colors in a rug from an old Boonville house look like they could run. Is a wash safe?
We find out before it gets wet. Dye tests come first. For dyes that aren’t colorfast, Rob can apply a mordant to help set them, though it won’t work on inks or pigments, and poultice drying wicks migrating dye away as the rug dries. If color has already run, repair can often make it much better, but it isn’t guaranteed.
Do reviewers talk about family rugs?
They do. M B wrote that Rob “cleaned a Persian rug that has great sentimental value to me,” and Lisa Jerry put it this way: “Not only does he know rugs, but he also loves them.” Neither review names a town. Both are among the more than 700 Google reviews MaxCare has, where the thing people mention most is how Rob explains the work.
Talk to Rob's team
Have a family rug in your Boonville house that's overdue for a wash?
Call (573) 817-2540, or bring it to the rug studio on Clinkscales Road, just off I-70 at exit 124.