Rugs in Meise: buying, restoration, cleaning

The building stock

The Flemish inventory describes Meise as a municipality "fairly heavily urbanised, where the residential function comes first", but whose expansion dates mainly from the end of the 1950s. Around the Sint-Martinuskerk / presbytery core: a mixed nineteenth- and twentieth-century fabric, historic farms such as the Drijtorenhof and the Haeck, and a series of villas — cottage-style and modernist — several of them by Luc Viérin and Willy Van Der Meeren.

Large windows and hard floors: the light fades a rug on one side only, and wool slides on polished concrete or stone. We work on the faded colours in restoration and we lay a non-slip underlay when the rug comes back.

What the buildings tell us

At Wolvertem the building stock is a mixed nineteenth- and twentieth-century lintbebouwing punctuated by medium-sized farms, with a parish church in each hamlet (Wolvertem centre, Imde, Meuzegem, Rossem, Westrode). Despite urbanisation since the 1970s, the hamlets remain surrounded by fields, meadows and wooded plots and farming is still active there. Two Providentia social housing schemes were built there in 1964-1966 and 1977-1980.

A converted Brabant farm means an unheated vaulted cellar and wool stored cool and in the dark — carpet moth country. We deal with moth attack, rising damp and animal smells in the wash.

Who lives here

2022 incomes: a median income of €34,639 per tax return and an average income of €48,429, across 11,447 returns — the highest level of the three Flemish municipalities covered here (Wemmel: €30,104 median; Zaventem: €30,823).

Large houses, rugs of large dimensions: here, regular maintenance and the valuation of an old piece make more sense than occasional cleaning by the square metre. We come and look at what you have before proposing anything.

The rug market

The Bouchout estate, at Meise, is home to the Meise Botanic Garden, one of the largest in the world: around 18,000 plant species — roughly 6% of the known species — and a herbarium of about 4 million specimens. The garden moved there in 1958, the decision to transfer it going back to 1937. The château de Bouchout was the residence of the Empress Charlotte of Mexico until her death in 1927.

The Bouchout estate serves us as a meeting point when an address is hard to find. Around it are large properties: that is where the old rugs left in the attic come out, at a house clearance or an estate, and we buy them as they are.

Collection

The A12 Brussels-Antwerp crosses Meise from north to south; 13 km and about 27 minutes from the Grand-Place. A major Agentschap Wegen en Verkeer works site: 8 km of motorway to be renewed on the A12 at Meise from 16 March to September 2026, with narrowed lanes between Meise and Londerzeel; the remodelling of the Londerzeel-Sud junction (Kerkhofstraat / Londerzeelsesteenweg) starts with utility works in the first half of 2027.

The A12 makes Meise a natural stop on the road from Brussels to Antwerp: we group the rug collections in the north on the same day. The works between Meise and Londerzeel narrow the lanes, and we allow for that in the slots we announce.

Access and parking

No low-emission zone in Flemish Brabant: Meise is freely accessible to a van whatever its Euro standard. The only Flemish LEZs are those of Antwerp and Ghent; the Brussels one, for its part, has banned Euro 5 diesels since 1 January 2026.

No low-emission zone, no pass, no registration plate to enter: we come and collect your rugs at home with no formalities beforehand, whatever the vehicle.