Rugs in Uccle: buying, restoration, cleaning

The building stock

The building stock of Uccle is mostly twentieth-century: only 8% predates 1919, 40% dates from between the wars and close to 50% from after 1945. Semi-detached and detached houses are over-represented there. This is the realm of the 1920s and 1930s herringbone parquet and of the large reception rooms that call for rugs of some size.

Herringbone parquet does not forgive damp: we wash the rug at the workshop and give it back perfectly dry, rather than wetting an old floor in your home.

Damp and water

The Royal Observatory of Belgium settled on the Uccle plateau (the Groeselenberg hill) in 1890-1891, and the Uccle climatological park has served ever since as the reference for Belgian climatology. In other words: when people talk about the climate of Belgium, they are literally talking about the climate measured at Uccle.

The Belgian climate is literally measured here: damp winters, slow springs, and wool that takes days to dry in a drawing room. That is why the drying is done flat, at the workshop, and not in your home.

The valley floor

The valley of the Geleytsbeek crosses the town — chaussée de Saint-Job, plaine du Bourdon, Keyenbempt. On 21 August 2021 the stream reached a flow of 13.3 m³/s there, about a hundred times its average flow, and flooded homes on the chaussée de Saint-Job. The cellars and ground floors of this valley floor are exactly the setting in which old wool is lost for want of a quick response.

Chaussée de Saint-Job, plaine du Bourdon, Keyenbempt: if the water has risen in your home, do not leave the rug to dry rolled up in a corner. Extraction, rinsing and drying flat make the difference between a piece saved and a piece lost.

The rug market

Uccle is a marketplace in its own right. The Hôtel de Ventes Vanderkindere stands at chaussée d'Alsemberg 685-687, one of the large Brussels salerooms, open Monday to Friday for valuations; and the Brocante de Fort Jaco brings together around 500 second-hand dealers on the last Sunday of August each year on the chaussée de Waterloo, between avenue Alphonse XIII and avenue Van Bever. Many Uccle rugs pass through one or the other — or through a direct sale to a buyer, when the seller wants neither the delay nor the commission.

Saleroom or flea market, you have to wait for the buyer and pay the commission. Buying direct is quicker: we value the rug at your home and we pay cash, with no consignment.

Collection

Since 1 May 2023 Uccle has applied revised rules: the former red zones have been converted into orange zones, judged better suited to an outer-belt municipality, and around half of the parking spaces in Uccle remain unregulated. It is the most comfortable municipality in the Brussels Region for a collection — but also the most stretched out: 22.9 km², or 14% of the regional territory, the second largest area in the Region after the City of Brussels, with close to a fifth of the accessible green space in Brussels.

Parking in front of your house is easy in Uccle, but the town is vast: between Saint-Job and Fort Jaco there is a real distance. We group rug collections by district in order to keep to the slots.

Who lives here

12% of Uccle residents are French nationals and 33% of the population is foreign (2022); 19% of residents are 65 or over, against a regional average of 13%. The European School Brussels I has its main site in Uccle. An elderly, home-owning population on one side, international families on the other: the two profiles that generate the most estates and the most rug buying.

A house being emptied after a whole life, or a family leaving at the end of a posting: in both cases rugs are left behind. We come and look at them, we value them, and we buy for cash what you are not keeping.