Chicago's Fire Damage Restoration Team Explains Cleaning Wooden Furniture

5/24/2018 (Permalink)

When dealing with fire and smoke damage, it is best to bring in the experts to help restore your home. Contact SERVPRO right away for best results.

Team SERVPRO is Certified When It Come to Remediating Fire Damage in Homes

Nobody ever plans on it happening to them, but it is possible that a small fire starts inside your Chicago apartment building. A blaze can burn materials and items inside the home forcing them to be counted as a loss. As a fire burns, some particles do not fully combust into gas creating plumes of smoke.
 
These partially combusted particles rise with the heat before adhering to cooler surfaces. When mitigating any fire damage in Chicago removing soot left behind from the smoke is an essential step of the process. Soot residues can ruin surfaces and cause pungent aromas to fill the air.
 
Various materials react differently to soot residues that consist of multiple partially combusted particles. Some soots can get wiped off with minimal effort while other types of residues adhere well to surfaces causing removal to be difficult. Our SERVPRO technicians have a vast quantity of different chemicals and methods they can implement based on each scenario.
 
When cleaning contents inside your home, the type of surface we are cleaning dictates the method we use. When cleaning porous surfaces, wet cleaning can cause more damage, so dry sponges get used to remove the soot. Non-porous surfaces can be scrubbed with water-based detergents because the moisture does not soak into the material.
 
If hardwood furniture gets affected by soot, the type of finish it has and the extent of the damage change the item's cleanability. Many furnishings have a finish that changes its ability to resist heat, smoke and odor particles. Depending on the type of finish, the coating can either help or hinder the cleaning process. Unfinished woods are porous and can get cleaned best using dry cleaning methods.
 
The heat created by the burn can cause hardwood furniture to blister. Some types of smoke can permanently stain the wood. If the piece of furniture suffers blistering or staining, then cleaning becomes impossible and refinishing is required.
 
Certain chemicals are explicitly designed for removing soot from materials like hardwoods. For assistance with smoke problems at your residence, call SERVPRO of Marquette Park / West Lawn / Ford City at (773) 337-3993 24 hours a day.
 
Click here for more information on the city of Chicago.