What to do with Oriental rug that’s seen better days
“It never hurts to have additional material,” said Alex Luongo, who oversees the repair department at the Gonsenhauser company. “We have many. We need many.” He suggested contacting the company first so that the owner can make sure, by looking at photographs, that the rug is suitable.
Patching a rug costs substantially less than reweaving because less skill is needed and the work gets done much faster.
“A couple hundred dollars a patch,” Luongo estimated, “versus triple for reweaving.” He noted that reweaving is done by people paid American wages, so the square-inch cost is a lot more than it is for weaving the original rug, which is typically made overseas by people paid far less.
For valuable rugs, however, repairs are best made by reweaving. Patches greatly reduce the value of these rugs; skillful repairs via reweaving take less of a toll.
The owner of Main Street rugs, who gave a single name of Mojan, suggested that you might also want to consider donating your rug to a nonprofit organization that is recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Giving this way entitles you to claim a tax deduction for the value of your gift, within certain limits.
Or you might want to consider keeping a piece of the rug by having it refashioned into an area rug, a pillow or upholstery for a footrest or chair. The cost of this varies with the project, the type of rug and whether it needs to be cleaned to make it flexible enough to work with, Mojan said. He would charge $75 to $200 for a 12-inch-square pillow made from your old rug. For something that’s been part of your family history for more than a century, that might be a small price to pay.