Yep....seems as if it will never get clean....but vacuum and vacuum some more....and keep as much as you can covered while they are finishing up. And every day EVERY DAY vacuum up as much of the crud as you can....and empty the vacuum bag. And perhaps be prepared to sacrifice the vacuum....that fine dust gets into the motor and wears it out quickly.
And if you can turn off the heat/ air conditioning system...and change that filter very often.
Just keep after it.
Linda C

So, I guess right now is not the time to invest in the Dyson Animal which I have been drooling over for about a year?

I could use my older vaccuum every day every day every day for a few months, then invest in the Dyson after I (hopefully) get most of the dust taken care of.

And I'll call around tomorrow and look into some professional cleaning.

WHOA!! Don't use any good vacuum on Drywall dust. Buy a cheap wet/dry and if it dies no big deal. Don't use a Dyson with drywall or even those Carpet freshening powders. We get them in every week to clean out. The dust chokes 'em out and they won't start.

Lucky - let me be very clear that I do NOT intend to clean up after a night of drywall work with my home vacuum!

What I am asking is, is it safe to buy a Dyson and begin using it on furniture that has seen a bit of drywall dust from work that was done months ago - if I first attempt a few passes with my older vacuum?

I have had a Dyson since they came on the US market in early 2003. The vacuum is a workhorse. I have cleaned up lots of drywall dust with it. And then we lived in a rental apartment for eight months and the rental company used a chem-dry type powder to clean the carpeting. For eight months I was pulling powder out of that rug with my Dyson with no ill effects.

Dyson recommends you wash the sponge-y filter every 3-4 months. If you are concerned, just wash it more often.

If the vacumn has a sponge filter, get an extra one and keep one in vac and one washed/drying for next day.

You might be able to use quilt batting over the filter, that is, if it would not put too much a drag on the vacumn.

Think they make stuff similar to quilt batting to put over heat/ac registers.

GardenWebber,

The short answer is, yes, you can get it out. But it's going to take some work.

One way to tackle it if your cushions are removable is to get yourself some big, thick garbage bags, go outside with a wet/dry vac, put the cushion in the bag and suck all the air out of the bag until the cushion is entirely flat as a pancake.

You need a good strong vacuum to get it super flat. I'd use something like a ShopVac. You'll want to do it outside b/c you don't want to be bothered with the expense of the super fine dust clogging up a HEPA filter on a fancy vacuum.

You may have to repeat the garbage bag trick a few times to make a dent in the dust. The problem with furniture is it uses fine cell foam as the cushioning material. That is the same stuff they use in the vacuum pre-filters to trap dust. So you're basically cleaning one big filter. Every time someone has sat on the furniture they have forced the dust deeper and deeper into the foam. It will take some work to bring it all back to the surface where it can be sucked away.

For the rest of the piece of furniture, you're probably going to have to punt to some form of wet cleaning - i.e. 'steam' cleaning to get all the dust out. As a previous poster mentioned with the wet microfiber cloth for cleaning hard surfaces, basically you're going to have to make fine mud and suck it out. The trick will be to use a machine that flushes as much water through the fabric/foam as possible. I personally use a Hoover SteamVac for our furniture and dining room chairs. It would be a good place to start but it doesn't have the best suction. Remember you have to get as much water back out as possible and dry it quickly or else the foam will mold/mildew.

Think of the drywall dust as embedded dry mud and that should give you a good handle on what it's going to take to get it back out. Wet cleaning is the fastest road to cleanliness for these kinds of issues.

- IT Geek

Lots of high end furniture is not padded with foam but rather down, dacron and cotton batting.
And if you start flushing water through foam padding, you will have a moldy mess if you don't get it totally dry.
Linda C

I agree with Linda on not adding water to this problem. I think the answer - if there is one - is vacuuming repeatedly over time (weeks, even months) until you get the dust out - slowly going over each area to give the vacuum the opportunity work.

They say that most people vacuum their carpeting too fast and the machine doesn't have a chance to work.

We are battling post remodeling destruction/construction wars of 3 bathrooms. Even though our contractor was diligent about plastic containment areas, that fine talcum powder like dust just seeps into everything. It even got into the china closet that is at the opposite end of the house on a different floor!

Using the Rainbow vac is a god send. (They're pretty expensive brand new, but can often be found quite reasonably priced either refurbished or on Craig's list.) We let the dust settle for 2 days before really cleaning and ran the rainbow and an air purifier quite a bit for those 2 days. Then the real cleaning began. After vacuuming (empty water filtration tank frequently), we started at the top of the room and wiped all the areas first with very mild soapy water in a cloth nearly wrung dry. Then immediately wiped the same area with another cloth dipped in clear water, also nearly wrung dry. Whenever the water changed colors in the buckets because of the accumulation of sheet rock mud we changed to fresh water. It's a LOT of work but has made an amazing difference. Our house has not been so clean since we built it 30 years ago!