Remove paint and glue stains from carpet

For the past two years the lounge has been used as a workshop and we have assembled and painted endless furniture projects in the room, so you can imagine what the carpet looks like. Since I haven't yet decided what flooring to put down, I'm cleaning the carpet as best I can for the time being.

 

Not much thought was given to protecting the carpet, as I planned to remove and replace when I again took over the lounge. Unfortunately, funds are limited and I simply cannot afford to rip out the carpet, so I'm going to try and remove as much paint and glue as possible as a test.

This area of the carpet is going to be my starting point. You can clearly see the two blue paint spots, which are from painting chair legs. Slap in the middle is a white paint spot, but I'm going to leave this here as a reference.

To try and remove the paint from the carpet I am going to be using Plascon RemovAll All Purpose Paint Remover. This is an eco-friendly product and, although probably not endorsed by Plascon, I want to see if it will remove the paint from the carpet.

I have nothing to lose - I either live with the paint stains or damage the carpet. I applied Plascon RemovAll the the paint spots on the carpet with a paintbrush. Following the instructions, I left this for 30 minutes and then applied a little more onto the top of the paint spots.

After using a plastic paint scraper to remove most of the paint stripper, I gently rubbed the carpet with a soft scrubbing brush and clean, warm water.

Absolute amazement...! I can hardly see any paint left and what remains can easily be cleaned off with a good carpet cleaning. However, the paint remover didn't take off any of the glue stains that are spotted all over the carpet, so I tried something different for this.

I boiled up a kettle of hot water and slowly poured the hot water onto the glue spots. Don't pour too much water onto the carpet, just enough to wet the spot.

Using a paint scraper, I gently lifted up the edges of the glue spot until it came loose. Be careful when scraping the top of the carpet, you don't want to damage the pile. Try to tease and lift the glue spot up as much as possible until it works free.

Knocked over a tin of paint. Been there plenty of times. This huge paint stain was just left to dry. I followed the same process to remove this as for the smaller areas.

After the third application the paint is coming off much easier and I am going to apply another couple of times to see if it will remove all the paint.

If you have an old carpet that has paint stains, and you are willing to take the risk, Plascon RemovAll All Purpose Paint Remover did remove the paint - without damaging my carpet. Test the method on an inconspicuous spot before attempting on the main area - just in case.

 

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