Chief & I took our latest acquisition, a 3.5'x5' Tabrizi rug dating from perhaps the 1950s, to one of the local rug shops for cleaning. The cost to clean it and repair the knots at one end will cost nearly twice the original purchase price, but that was so low that we really can't complain; add both costs together and it comes to about what the rug would appraise for.
But that's not the whole story. We decided to let the woman running the place show us a "few" carpets, in case we saw one we might like for the entryway we'll have once the cabin addition is finished. She had 3 male staffers hopping, with two of them peeling back one carpet after another on this or that stack, while a 3rd took the ones we liked and spread them out for viewing. In the event, we ended up with 8 carpets thus displayed, all Persians (Sarruk, Shirazi, Kermani, Qashqai, Qomi - all spellings very approximate). Wow, did that look wonderful! And our tastes are sufficiently similar that it was easy for us to get down to two carpets, both Qashqais.
It can be dangerous to go shopping with someone so like-minded, though. We went back and forth between the two, talked about where this one or that one might go, and ended up buying both of them. As I said, a very expensive carpet cleaning!
And there's a further potential hazard to our bank balance; the merchant's lease was not renewed (the building has a new owner who doesn't want to deal w/ retail establishments) and the husband wants to retire, so they'll be having a going-out-of-business sale starting next month in hopes of selling their entire inventory before they have to move out at the end of November. If we go, we'll probably buy - the wife apparently does all the buying herself, and we both really like her taste!
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