Dover Rug & Home

Dover Rug & Home is a showroom first and an installer second — the flooring work here is rugs and carpet: hand-knotted and custom pieces sold out of a Stuart Street storefront in Back Bay, then cut, bound, and installed in the home. If you want hardwood sanded or tile laid, this is the wrong door. The family behind it has been at this a long time. The Jafri family designs and imports hand-knotted rugs from Pakistan, India and Nepal, and the business traces back to a small showroom in the town of Dover; the Better Business Bureau puts it at 47 years and lists Mahmud Jafri as owner with eight employees. Its BBB page carries an A+, though the company is not BBB accredited. Ratings are consistent without being deep: 4.7 on Google across 18 ratings, 4.7 on Houzz across 26. What customers keep describing is the buying process rather than the labor — patient guidance through a selection, rugs brought to the house to see in place, no pressure to close. One customer this May said a custom entryway runner still looked right after more than two years of use. The complaints are worth reading before you go. One reviewer described rugs that kept shedding lint and hair two years on, with the shop's answer being to have them cleaned. Another was annoyed that a donated gift certificate turned out to apply only to the high-end hand-knotted line. Both point the same direction: this is a premium-priced inventory, and the fine print matters. Dover is the right call if you want a specific rug — a stair runner, a custom-cut and bound piece, a room-sized hand-knotted rug — and you want someone to measure, deliver and install it properly. Ask what the quoted price covers on binding and installation, and ask directly about shedding on whatever pile you're considering.