Cleaning Furniture After a Fire

6/25/2021 (Permalink)

If you’ve suffered a serious fire at your home or business, then you know that one of the most difficult things to deal with after the fact is the soot and the smoke. Soot can stain your structure and your contents, and the odor can be pervasive even if you can’t see any visible staining.

For this reason, most people assume that their furniture will be a loss after a fire. After all, if they can’t even get the smell out of the walls, how could they expect to get it out of an armchair?

It’s true that, much of the time, furniture must be replaced if it has been exposed to significant levels of fire, smoke and soot. Often, though, our trained team of furniture cleaners can make that damage “Like it never even happened.” Here’s how we do that.

Upholstered Furniture

Upholstered furniture is extremely difficult to clean if it’s been exposed to smoke. Even if it looks clean, it still might contain particles of smoke and soot that it will continuously release into the air over time, causing a lingering odor that can be difficult to pin down. 

The key with upholstery is care and precision. Soot must be carefully vacuumed so as not to spread or smear the particles. All removable covers should be washed separately. What remains can often be cleaned using our proprietary upholstery cleaning machine. If we make an attempt and the furniture still is not cleaned to our standard or your satisfaction, then we will likely recommend that it is written up as a loss and replaced by your insurance carrier.

Leather Furniture

Unlike upholstery, leather cannot be wet cleaned, and you must be extremely careful not to scratch it. When we vacuum up soot, we likely won’t even make direct contact with the leather out of caution.

Once soot has been vacuumed, then we will employ one of our in-house leather cleaning products, which have been specially formulated to clean leather after disasters.

Wooden Furniture

Technically, wooden furniture is the simplest to clean, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Soot should be vacuumed and a wet cleaning process will usually follow. After that, we’ll use one of our proprietary wood polishing and conditioning products to return your wooden furniture to preloss condition.

Our best advice is this - if you’ve suffered a fire, don’t handle the cleaning on your own. Getting it wrong can make the damage worse, if not permanent. Give us a call - we’re here to help.