The Shop
Two vans, two Hayes, one price
Small on purpose. The people who quote your job are the people who do it.
Want to see how jobs actually go before you call? The case studies are real houses, and the FAQs answer the rest.
You searched for a number and landed on a page that doesn't have one. Here's the trade, opened up: what really moves a quote, how a low advertised number turns into a bigger bill in your hallway, and what to ask before anybody unrolls a hose. Then call us and we'll quote your actual floor — (859) 621-7847, free.
Because a published number would be a guess, and a guess is exactly how the door surprise starts. Somebody posts a low figure to win the click, the truck shows up, and the number grows once you're standing in your own hallway with the furniture already pushed against a wall.
Two houses with the same room count can be very different jobs. One has been cleaned in the last two years, no pets, rooms mostly clear. The other has a flight of stairs, a dog with a favorite corner, and carpet nobody has touched since it was installed. Same room count. Not the same day's work.
So we do it the other way around. We look at every room with you, identify the fiber — wool and synthetics need different care — and give you a clear, upfront price before anything comes off the van. It's free, and the price we quote is the price you pay. What we can tell you before we've seen your floor is what's going to move that number, and that's the rest of this page.
Seven questions about your actual house. You get back the time this job takes, which parts of it are doing the pushing, and the sentence to say when you call so the number on the phone survives the visit.
No email, no form, and no price — a price is a conversation with your floor in it. This tells you what that conversation will be about.
Time on the job, not money. This uses the same rough model as the estimator on our home page, with the things that actually add minutes bolted on — it's an estimate, not a quote and not a promise.
Almost every quote you get in Central Kentucky is built one of these three ways. None of them is dishonest by itself. Each one hides something different.
The most common way to quote a house, because it's the easiest for both sides to hold in their head. You know what you're getting before anyone arrives.
What it hides: what counts as a room. Advertised room rates very often cap a "room" at a modest square footage in the fine print — so a normal bedroom can quietly become two rooms once somebody is standing in it with a tape measure. Ask what one room means before you agree to a room rate.
The honest way to price a big open space, a basement, or commercial work, where "rooms" stop being a useful unit at all.
What it hides: the setup. Square footage measures floor, not work. Two hundred square feet of stairs is nothing like two hundred square feet of open living room, and a small figure per foot can still land somewhere surprising across a whole house. Ask what the total comes to, not just the rate.
Somebody walks the house, sees the fiber, the stairs, the traffic lanes and the pet corner, and prices the day. This is how we do it.
What it asks of you: a few minutes at the start. The trade-off is that the number can't move afterward — the walk-through is where the surprises are supposed to happen, not the invoice.
This is a known pattern in the trade, and it runs the same way almost every time. Knowing the rungs is most of the defense.
A very low per-room figure, or a whole-house special, priced to win the phone call rather than to cover the day. Nobody cleans carpet properly for that figure and nobody intends to. Its whole job is getting a truck into your driveway.
The tech arrives and your rooms turn out to be bigger than the rooms in the ad. Living room counts as two. The hallway and the stairs were never included. The number has doubled and no one has touched a carpet yet.
Now the add-ons come out, and each one sounds reasonable on its own: pre-treatment, spot treatment, deodorizer, protectant, an enzyme for the pet corner, moving the sofa. The advertised price bought a bare pass. Everything that makes cleaning work is sold separately, one yes at a time.
You're standing in your own hallway, the furniture is already pushed against the wall, and there's a van in the driveway. This is the hardest place in the world to say no, and the pattern depends on that. That's the part that makes it a tactic instead of a mistake.
Worth separating two things people lump together: a recommendation isn't a trap. Any honest cleaner will sometimes tell you a spot needs a second treatment or that your stairs are a bigger job than you thought. The difference is whether "no thanks" is an answer the price can survive.
Including us. These take two minutes on the phone and they sort the trade out fast — not by the answers alone, but by how specific somebody is willing to be before they've got your address.
The single most useful question you can ask about a per-room price. If there's a square-footage cap on a "room," you want to know it now, not when somebody is measuring your living room and calling it two.
Ours: we quote the job, not by the room, after we've seen it — so this one's answered by the walk-through.
Pre-treatment, spot work, deodorizer, protectant, moving furniture, stairs, hallways, closets. Every one of those is somebody's add-on somewhere. Get the list before the truck rolls.
Ours: the quote covers the job we agreed to in the walk-through. The price we quote is the price you pay.
Hot water extraction, dry compound, bonnet, encapsulation — they're genuinely different jobs with different results and different prices. A cleaner who can't name their method plainly is a problem before you ever get to money.
Ours: truck-mounted hot water extraction, water heated to 230°F. It's the method the industry standard (IICRC S100) is built around and the one most carpet mills specify for warranty compliance.
You're handing somebody a key to your house and a machine that moves water through it. This should be an easy yes with no throat-clearing.
Ours: licensed and insured, every job.
Plenty of outfits sell the job in one voice and send whoever's available in another. Worth knowing whether the person you're talking to has ever seen the inside of your kind of house.
Ours: Bobby and Robbie. It's a two-man family shop — a father and a son, two vans, no rotating crews. You get us.
Listen for whether there's an actual answer or just reassurance. Some stains genuinely don't come out — bleach, burns, some dye damage — and a straight cleaner will say so before the job rather than after.
Ours: satisfaction guaranteed — we're not done until you're happy. And if we think something won't come out, you'll hear it at the walk-through.
The question the whole page is really about. There's a big difference between "we'll confirm when we see it" and "we'll let you know at the end."
Ours: no. The walk-through is where the price gets set, and it's set before anything comes off the van.
Everything on the left is real work that takes real time. Everything on the right is a number moving for reasons that have nothing to do with your carpet.
Small on purpose. The people who quote your job are the people who do it.
Want to see how jobs actually go before you call? The case studies are real houses, and the FAQs answer the rest.
It depends on how many rooms, what shape the carpet is in, and what's in the way — so we quote each job individually, for free, with no obligation. Call (859) 621-7847 and we'll give you a clear, upfront price. What we can tell you before anybody has looked at your floor is what moves that number, which is what this page is for.
Because a published number would be a guess, and a guess is how the door surprise starts. Two houses with the same room count can be very different jobs: stairs, how long it's been since the last cleaning, pet spots, wool instead of synthetic, how much furniture has to move. We'd rather quote the job in front of us and stand behind it than post a number we'd have to walk back on your living room floor.
Labor, almost every time. Square footage sets the floor, then the things that add passes and setup add to it: stairs (hand work, one tread at a time), heavy soil that needs extra pre-treatment and extra passes, pet spots that need enzyme treatment and sometimes a second application, furniture that has to be moved and blocked, delicate fiber like wool that's cleaned differently, and access — a long hose run from the van to your door is time before the wand ever touches carpet.
Per room is easier to understand and is what most residential cleaners quote; per square foot is the honest way to price a big open space or commercial work. The catch is in the fine print of per-room deals: many advertised room rates cap what counts as a room at a fairly small square footage, so a normal bedroom can quietly count as two once somebody's standing in it. Whichever way you're quoted, ask what counts as one room before you agree.
Because the advertised number usually buys a bare pass, and everything else is sold as an add-on: pre-treatment, spot treatment, deodorizer, protectant, moving furniture, stairs, hallways. The low number gets the truck in the driveway, and the real price gets assembled in your hallway when it's hardest to say no. That's not the same thing as an honest recommendation — a real cleaner can suggest something and take no for an answer without the price changing.
The price we quote is the price you pay — no upselling at the door. The walk-through comes first: we look at every room with you, identify the fiber, and give you an upfront price before any equipment comes off the van. If something turns up that genuinely changes the job, you hear it then, in plain language, before we start — not on an invoice afterward.
Please move small and fragile things — lamps, electronics, breakables. We can carefully work around or move most standard furniture like sofas and chairs, and very heavy pieces (beds, entertainment centers, china cabinets) typically stay where they are. If you'd rather clear the rooms yourself beforehand, it does make the job faster — worth mentioning when you call.
Not by itself. A low quote from someone who tells you exactly what it includes, what counts as a room, and what stairs would run is just a fair price. A low quote with nothing behind it is a different animal — a number designed to win the phone call, not to survive the visit. Ask what's included and listen to how specific the answer is. Vagueness on the phone becomes an add-on in the hallway.
Free estimate, upfront price, no upselling at the door. Call or text — a Hayes answers.
Call (859) 621-7847