Rug restoration in Meise

The rug market

The domaine de Bouchout, in Meise, is home to the Jardin botanique de Meise, 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 Empress Charlotte of Mexico until her death in 1927.

A piece that has value deserves to be restored before it is sold — but not in any old way: a clumsy restoration loses more than it brings in.

Collection

The A12 Brussels-Antwerp crosses Meise from north to south; 13 km and about 27 min from the Grand-Place. Major works by the Agentschap Wegen en Verkeer: renewal of 8 km of motorway 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) begins with utility diversion works in the first half of 2027.

We take the rug away to the workshop: restoration is not done in your home. Access therefore governs the date, not the quote.

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 heterogeneous 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.

The building stock dictates the wear: a rug laid in the corridor of a Brussels house does not wear like one in the living room of a villa. The selvedges go first where people walk.