Rugs in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre: buying, restoration, cleaning

Who lives here

Woluwe-Saint-Pierre records the highest equivalised median income in the Brussels Region: €21,221 (2019 tax year), or 34% above the regional median, and a median net taxable income of €31,645 in 2023. 38% of the population is of foreign nationality (2022), led by the French (2,620), Italians (1,529), Spaniards (1,308) and Germans (1,142).

When a rug was bought to last, it is looked after in the same spirit: a full wash, a check of the selvedges, work on the fringes before they give way. It is less spectacular than a replacement, and it lasts thirty years longer.

The building stock

Semi-detached and detached houses are three times better represented there than the regional average, density is only 4,720 inhabitants/km² (2022) — one of the lowest in the Brussels Region — and 67% of the territory is covered by vegetation. The bourgeois building stock was fixed by the laying out of the avenue de Tervueren between 1880 and 1910, on which the Palais Stoclet (no. 279, Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte) has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 2009. In concrete terms: large villa drawing rooms, and so rugs of 3 × 4 m and larger, to be taken out through French windows rather than through stairwells.

In a villa drawing room, the 3 × 4 m rug goes out through the French window, not through the stairwell: it is quicker and it avoids folding it. We find that way out before the day we take it away for washing.

The rug market

The town organises its flea markets by district rather than as a permanent market: quartier du Centre, Sainte-Alix, Montgomery-Gribaumont, each on one day in the year, to which are added the two Stockel fairs on the place Dumon (Ascension week and the week of 15 August) and the Stockel street sales in spring and autumn. Here an oriental rug is not picked up at a market: it comes out of a house, on the occasion of a move or an estate.

Here an oriental rug is not picked up at a market: it comes out of a house, on the occasion of a move or an estate. Those are exactly the moments when we come to value and to buy for cash.

The household profile

Many embassies are established around the square Maréchal Montgomery and along the avenue de Tervueren. Diplomatic residences change occupants at the rhythm of postings: it is a steady flow of oriental rugs that arrive, leave again, or stay where they are at the end of a posting.

Around the square Montgomery and the avenue de Tervueren, the residences change occupant at the rhythm of postings. A rug that arrives has travelled rolled and calls for a wash; a rug that does not leave again, we buy.

Damp and water

The Woluwe originally wound through a marshy valley before being straightened and largely culverted. The sewers, although oversized six times over, see flows exceed their capacity by up to twenty times during heavy rain, and the permanent wetlands cause groundwater problems that call for continuous pumping under some buildings. After the heavy rain on the night of 1 August 2024, the town brought its residents together on 10 September 2024 with Vivaqua on how the sewers and storm basins work.

A high water table and sewers overwhelmed by heavy rain: in some buildings there is continuous pumping under the cellars. A rug stored there takes up damp through its back — keep it upstairs, or have it washed and wrapped before you store it.

Collection

Woluwe-Saint-Pierre works mainly as a blue zone: 2 hours maximum with the parking disc, from 9.00 to 18.00 Monday to Saturday (Monday to Friday in some streets), with green and orange zones on the shopping cores. The constraint is therefore not the price but the clock — and, in villas with a long private drive, the distance between the drawing-room door and the place where the vehicle can actually park.

Blue zone, two hours with the parking disc, and in the villas a drive to cross between the drawing room and the place where the van can park. We plan for two people to carry it, so the rug leaves rolled and is never dragged.