Rug cleaning
in Vallejo.

Mare Island shaped Vallejo for 142 years: the Navy opened its first Pacific shipyard here in 1854 and didn’t close it until 1996. The workforce that built and repaired those ships lived close by, in the streets that are now the St. Vincent’s Hill Historic District — 542 buildings, listed on the National Register in 2003, running from plain vernacular cottages to grander Victorian- and Craftsman-era houses built for shipyard families and the parish of St. Vincent Ferrer. A separate downtown district, the Old City Historic District, was listed thirty years earlier, in 1973. Rugs from these blocks tend to be older, handed down from grandparents who worked the yard, and they carry a century of coal dust, bay fog and hardwood-floor wear that a home vacuum won’t touch. Out toward the water in Glen Cove, newer houses sit above the Carquinez Strait, and the wool rugs there see more direct sun and less standing damp than the ones downtown. We collect from both ends of the city — Old Town rowhouses and the ranch homes further out — with the same twelve-step cold-water wash, whether the piece is a hundred years old or five. Given the distance from Newark, we don’t run a routine Vallejo route; every pickup is set up by arrangement once you call.

Vallejo is about fifty-one miles from our Newark atelier, across the Carquinez Bridge on I-80. That’s far enough that we don’t run a fixed weekly route — instead we set a pickup window once you reach out, and confirm it fast by phone or text. Our own crew handles the collection, the wash and the return; nothing goes to a contractor or a courier. Customer service is available from 8am to 8pm, seven days, if you need to move a window.