ADVANCED ON-SITE Drapery Cleaning
Because Life Happens
Customer at Jupiter Hills CC had a Vignette® Roman shade with a nasty water stain on it. POW! Gone in 60 seconds.
ADVANCED ON-SITE‘s specialty is drapery and shade cleaning, though we offer a range of other services related to window coverings. Contact us to discuss your needs.
Ira
We saw an accordion shade basically turned on its side and it hangs from a track on a sliding glass door. Do you have those and how much? Our door is 80 inches high and 109 inches wide
THE SAGE
Your description resembles a product called Vertiglide™. Its manufacturer is Hunter Douglas, a longtime leader in the window coverings industry. To view a video demonstrating its use click here.
Vertiglide™ is a traversing honeycomb shade (sometimes called accordion, or cell shade), made up of vertically oriented pleats. It could in fact be described as a honeycomb shade turned on its side, but a more complex operating system is required.
Base pricing has been sent to the email provided when you posted your question (includes installation). It reflects your stated dimensions, which would need to be confirmed with a visit from an ADVANCED ON-SITE representative.
The base product can be ordered to stack on either the left or right side of the opening. Additional surcharges apply if split stack, traveling center stack, or Duolite™ design options are desired. Likewise, expanded color pallets, patterns, fabric types and pleat sizes can be obtained through additional charges.
Please use the comment form at the bottom of this page if you have additional questions. Should you wish to move forward with ordering and installation please respond with a daytime telephone number to the email mentioned above.
Thank you for your submission.
NOTE: ADVANCED ON-SITE‘s specialty is drapery and shade cleaning, though we offer a range of other services, related to window coverings. Contact us to discuss your needs.
Customer at Woodfied CC, Boca Raton was so impressed with our ability to remove dog urine from these lined drapes, we were called back for a second service. This time, smudged feces was also present. It didn’t seem appropriate to ask how it happened, but the mental images were quite entertaining.
ADVANCED ON-SITE‘s specialty is drapery and shade cleaning, though we offer a range of other services related to window coverings. Contact us to discuss your needs.
Another challenging plantation shutter install.
Pictured, is what’s known as a “double hung” configuration. There were two other shutters of identical size and configuration in the same room, which was to be used as an office.
The owner’s intention was to place desk/credenza components along the walls where each shutter was located. She wished to have the ability to open some panels without the need to move heavy furniture.
Generally a shutter this size would feature four, full length panels. As you can see, each had eight in this case. Four large across the top, four small across the bottom. The loss of structural integrity when panels are divided in this manner requires use of horizontal supports. These can be seen intersecting the required vertical supports.
Since the horizontals must be divided into three parts, (left, center, right) they cannot always be attached in the same fashion as the verticals (two screws into each end through concealed portions of frame). Invariably what you’re left with is a couple of locations where toe-nailing into the ends from the back side of each vertical becomes necessary. This is especially exciting when the shutter is made of anything other than wood.
These were of a composite material, which is attractive and very good quality, but nowhere near as forgiving as wood. Meaning, you only get one chance to hit your mark. All the while ensuring that the horizontal remains in the exact location prescribed. If you fail, you may have to “eat” the entire shutter. Certainly, both the horizontal and vertical supports will be lost.
It pays, then, to assemble the entire shutter, including panels, before attempting such an operation. Because, guess what? Even if the “pilot holes,” sometimes used by manufacturers to designate screw locations, are placed wrong at the factory, you still get to “eat” the product.
ADVANCED ON-SITE is certified as having completed training that focuses on complex shutter configurations, and how to foresee potential problems before they develop. It can’t be called rocket science, but you’re well advised not to entrust your shutters to just any installer.
Our specialty is drapery and shade cleaning, though we offer a range of other services related to window coverings. Contact us to discuss your needs.
That’s right! We install plantation shutters!
Pictured, is one of our more elaborate installations involving four very large units at the private Alicante community in Juno Beach. Two of them could not have been more complicated, given their arched shapes and the fact that they reached as high as 14 feet in the air.
The unit at upper right qualifies as our most complicated ever, due to its modular construction and the need to hoist it into place already assembled. Boy, if that wasn’t a tricky operation.
Know what was even more tricky? The preliminary measurements and calculations that went into ensuring the best possible fit in an opening with all sorts of issues. Not only was it badly out of square, but the wall on which it was located had a big nasty bow at the point where the top of its left “ear” portion intersected the left leg of its “eyebrow” (arched) portion.
Bear in mind that a shutter’s frame must be perfectly square and plumb, on all planes, in order for the panels to function properly when installed. This requires the ability to plan in advance for adjustments that can be executed only during installation.
Don’t trust this to just anyone. ADVANCED ON-SITE is equal to the task.
Our specialty is drapery and shade cleaning, though we offer a range of other services related to window coverings. Contact us to discuss your needs.
Perhaps as much as eighty percent of all plantation shutters sold in the past ten years utilize a “rear tilt” (left) method, rather than the traditional “tilt bar” (right) they were originally known for.
While both are connected to each and every louver, the “tilt bar” is typically made of the same material and located on the front center of the panel. “Rear tilt” can be either metal or plastic and located on the rear of the panel, usually at the same end of the louvers as its hinges.
This post focuses on the traditional tilt bar. Some aficionados still insist upon it, though many do not properly understand its purpose.
It is NOT intended as a handle for moving the louvers, so let’s clear that up right away. In fact, you should never touch it!
The correct way to open and close louvers is to grasp one in each hand, as far apart, both vertically and horizontally, as you can. When you begin to move them, the tilt bar’s true purpose becomes evident. Namely, to ensure that all the louvers move in unison. That’s it! There’s no other reason for its existence.
When the tilt bar is used as a handle, its connectors are subjected to undue stress. This dramatically reduces their life expectancy.
Wooden and composite shutters most often use opposing wire staples. These are prone to rust and corrosion, not to mention fatigue. Polyvinyl shutters use various types of plastic connectors, which dry out and become brittle as a result of the constant heat inside a window opening.
In either case, connectors are not easily replaced. Where vinyl shutters are concerned, there’s the matter of, first, determining who the manufacturer was. This can be surprisingly difficult, as most do not place their name anywhere on the product.
Manufacturers of polyvinyl shutters often use their own proprietary connectors. If a homeowner is unable to recall where their shutters were purchased, he or she may end up with a very expensive piece of junk covering the window.
Wood shutter connectors are generally easier to replace, but there are occasional exceptions.
ADVANCED ON-SITE‘s specialty is drapery and shade cleaning, though we offer a range of other services, including shutter installation & repair. Contact us to discuss your needs.
This well appointed home at Woodfield Country Club, Boca Raton could be used as a Hunter Douglas Gallery Showroom, for all the company’s products on display there.
We’ve been called out to clean every one of the home’s Silhoutte® shadings three times, just since 2007! The reason? Insects crawl inside Silhouette’s louver cells, sometimes getting their little legs caught in the face fabric’s sheer weave. Of course they die there and can be very difficult to remove, completely.
Fear not! We make such problems go away, daily.
ADVANCED ON-SITE‘s specialty is drapery and shade cleaning, though we offer a range of other services related to window coverings. Contact us to discuss your needs.
In 1996 the Hunter Douglas corporation unveiled its latest in a series of innovative window fashions. Luminette® privacy sheers combined the soft look of traditional sheer draperies with the function of a vertical blind, and its ability to control light and privacy. This proved to be nothing short of groundbreaking.
It was not the first attempt at such a marriage, but it was the first to employ “solid state” characteristics. Whereas other products consisted of a vertical blind with sheer fabric attached to, or interwoven among its PVC vanes, this new product utilized semi-rigid fabric vanes permanently affixed to machined creases in the sheer.
There was no stitching! Through a process involving heat activated adhesives the sheer and its vanes effectively became individual components of a larger whole.
Fabric vanes put less stress on supporting track components than their much heavier PVC counterparts. That’s a distinct advantage when you consider the fact that sunlight and heat weaken plastic carrier assemblies over time.
However, semi-rigid vanes fused to a supple sheer can just as easily become a disadvantage when certain product requirements go unheeded. Chief among these is proper handling.
A common mistake is when Luminette® is taken down and lain across a bed or table. Rather than flowing uniformly, as the sheer is intended to do when hanging vertically, the rigidity of the vanes forces it to rumple in places. The fabric’s “memory” then retains this characteristic after re-installation. Steaming cannot be guaranteed to return it to its original condition.
Worse still are creases the vanes can easily sustain during take down, or when the fabric is stored improperly. They’re considered permanent damage, and will also result in unsightly rumpling and drawing of the sheer.
There is only one way to prevent such condition issues. In the process of removing Luminette® from an opening, one must roll the fabric back onto its original shipping core – a cardboard tube similar to the type carpets are rolled onto, only larger in diameter. Painter’s tape is used to hold the last vane in place.
The additional step of placing the rolled fabric inside something known as “drapery tubing” is commonly taken. It’s a lightweight plastic covering capable of being sealed at each end. This protects the fabric from construction dust and other contaminants.
It is important to remember that Luminette® protrudes significantly farther into a room than a vertical blind does. From 4½ inches farther in it’s “Classic” incarnation, to 6½ inches when ordered with the larger “Quintette” vane size.
Therefore any top treatment or side panel must be mounted far enough from the opening to leave ample room for Luminette® to traverse, and for its vanes to tilt without coming into contact with one of those other treatments. Likewise, if Luminette® is to be mounted inside a vertically recessed header, that recess must provide ample room. This may all seem obvious at the outset, but it’s shocking how often these rules go unobserved.
For example, enthusiastic decorators sometimes try to pull off layered treatments where there is simply not enough space. Depending on the treatment types, as well as how they are mounted, a four layer configuration can protrude as much as 15 inches into a room! Taking up that much floor space in a 2,000 square foot room is one thing. In an 800 square foot room it can look like an elephant.
Aware of this, decorators will often instruct the installer to “make it all happen within 10 inches of the opening.” The experienced and principled installer will decline such a directive. He or she understands the implications. Any resistance met by a drape or shade as it moves through a confined area means additional force must be exerted on control cords. In turn, components like tensioners and brackets are stressed beyond their limits. Not to mention the wear and tear that occurs when fabrics repeatedly drag across each other’s surfaces.
Luminette® can develop condition issues stemming from anything which prevents its fabric from hanging freely. For instance, its semi-rigid vanes will bend if they touch the floor. Or anything on it. As discussed, this influences the appearance of the sheer fabric. And remember, Luminette® fabrics retain bad memories.
To illustrate just how important it is for Luminette® to enjoy complete separation from anything in close proximity, consider the visual at left. What you’re seeing is a snapshot of a section of Luminette®, drawn across the opening so all its vanes stack to one side. Next to it, the same section is shown partially inverted so as to highlight the circled condition issues.
This Luminette® was custom made and installed to clear the floor. Not the interior door mat the homeowner later placed just inside and near the center of the sliding glass array it was meant to cover. The thickness of the mat brought it into contact with the Luminette’s vanes, pushing them up slightly. Not enough to alarm the homeowner, but enough to buckle the folds of the sheer.
Note that only the folds left spanning the mat, when the fabric was drawn closed across the opening, were affected. The rest were stacked neatly and proportionally as they should be. It’s the buckles that prevent this.
A Luminette® retaining its fresh from the factory appearance after many years of use, is one that has come into contact with only three things,
In addition to cleaning, ADVANCED ON-SITE is specially trained and equipped to take down Luminette® should painting, or other modifications to its surroundings become necessary.
