The wife and I are in the opening stages of buying a house. We’ve done this before, so we don’t have any questions on the process, or anything like that.
The question of the day has to do with smoking. The owners are a couple of chain smokers, and the first floor reeks pretty badly. How do we kill the smell?
The carpet has to go just on general principles, so that’s easy. What about the walls and ceiling? She wants me to buy a couple of 5 gallon buckets of Kilz, and pretty much paint the interior with a firehose, then paint for decoration. I say that’s excessive, we could mop the walls and ceiling with something like ammonia water, let it dry, and paint for decoration.
FWIW, there is an outbuilding that they used as a small bodyshop. It’s pretty grimy, so I’m going to use a pressure washer on the interior; something I can’t do inside the house.
My daughter bought a house that had two old-maid sisters both chain smokers for 40 or so years. “We” i.e. wife, daughter & myself scrubbed down the whole interior with painters cleaner, t.s.p. Applied solvent baased Kilz primer to walls and woodwork, & two (s) coats of latex paint. The bath was torn out to studs, and a closet between kitchen & family room. Those areas were rebuilt/modified and new wallboard, paint, etc.
All doors, two exterior, eight interior were all stripped to bare wood and refinished.
Use a heat gun and scraper. Learn the techniques and it is faster and neater than messy paint and varnish remover.
My daughter moved in and had no problems with allergies associated with smoke sensitivity. She can not tolerate second hand smoke the least bit.!
worked out well. (Got a bargain price on the house.)
The 3-bedroom condo I bought a few years ago was previously owned by heavy smokers. In the family room where they spent most of their time, the smoking stains were so heavy the nictoine was literally running down the walls.
On the advice of my painter, we used both TSP and Kilz in the heaviest areas and Kilz everywhere else. I also had all the carpets steam cleaned, and all the ductwork cleaned. I replaced all the vents, many of which were stained, with nice new ones.
After the paint smell dissipated there was no sign of smoking odor whatsoever.
It’s possible that TSP and Kilz together was overkill. The Kilz alone may have been sufficient, but the TSP certainly helped clear away the visible smoke residue and probably helped the Kilz and the paint adhere to the surface. I also suspect that cleaning out all the ducts wasn’t strictly necessary. But it helped me feel that I had done everything possible.
It’s easier to do everything before you move stuff in than it is to try and fix a problem after the fact. Overkill may be a little more expensive, but as long as you really fix the problem, you won’t have reason to regret it.
(And I’m really not as anal as this post might make me sound. I’m not a germophobe or anything. It’s just that, with no experience in this area, I decided to be safe rather than sorry.)
I think cleaning the ductwork is a good idea. Washing with tsp is not all that hard, just don’t get it on your skin. If you’re going to kilz everything you might find it worthwhile to rent an airless sprayer, especially since you’re getting rid of the carpet. Good luck.
Among things that could be wrong with a house that one might consider buying (and still buy despite that fact), this is way, way down the list. Smoke odor is a common problem and relatively easy and inexpensive to fix.
I defy you to find any other property in my area with 2200 ft[sup]2[/sup] on a half-acre for $150K. Taking care of smoke and dirt is just a matter of elbow grease.
My gf just bought a very nice used car. The day after purchase, there is a definate odor of cig smoke. We assume the dealer masked the odor with a spray of some sort that has now worn off. Any thoughts for deodorizing a vehicle?
We’ve bought five house over the years, and there are always some haggles and thing the buyer wants done to close the sale.
I could not think of buying a home with tobbaco stink unless the sellers first had it cleaned completely. Then, the contingency would be that it had to smell clean after five days, before you close the deal.
If the house is such a good deal that you want it anyway, well go ahead, and lots of luck.
If no one has suggested this already, perhaps you should buy, um… a lot of big bags of charcoal… and open the bags around the house where the smell is bad and it should absorb the smell.
I’ve always had luck with baking soda. Sprinkle on the carpet and seats, pat it down into the padding, then vaccum out the excess. It won’t eliminate the smell entirely, but will freshen things up as the odor fades.
For a house, Kilz has (almost) always worked for me. The only time it failed was in a family room of an old farm house with a fire place. The walls were oak paneling and saturated with smoke (wood smoke and tobacco smoke), it took three coats to stop the smoke from bleeding through. Once the bleeding stopped, one good coat of paint covered smoothly and there was no more smell (the whole room smelled like a fire pit before).
As with the car, eventually the smell in the house will fade. Primer and paint the walls, replace the carpet, definately have the ducts cleaned (a good idea anyway, IMHO mold is worse than smoke, kind of like getting shot is worse than getting stabbed). Clean with baking soda as often as practical and wait it out, it will fade sooner or later.
Most non-smokers don’t realize we smoke in the house or in the car. A lot of times people are suprised to see me smoking in the first place. It just takes a little effort.
–Excuse me, all this talk of smoking and painting has given me the urge.
We bought our house from heavy smokers. We ripped out the carpet and cleaned the walls (with regular supplies, nothing fancy) and got rid of most of the smell. Fortunately, we bought our house in the spring, so we left the windows open a lot for the first couple of months after we moved in. It took a couple of months, but the house did finally “air out” and the smell went away.
When we did get around to repainting, we used Killz. You need it to cover up the smoke stains on the ceilings and the tops of the walls. I say just kill two birds with one stone and use it to get rid of the stains and a lot of the smell all at once. You still may need to stock up on a couple of months of air freshener. That damn smoke smell seems to get into every nook and cranny of the house. Don’t worry though, it does go away.
Be careful with the pressure washer. Those things can cut through wood and many other building materials.
I’ve been looking at the Kilz web site and it looks like the product is supposed to seal against subsequent damage rather than provide any cleanup over existing damage. Am I missing something?
There’s a spray called Ozium which will get rid of smoke odor in cars. I buy it at the car parts store. There are scented ones which are nasty but the unscented variety has a very faint lemony odor at first which goes away quickly, as does the smoke odor. It doesn’t work as well in houses I think because the area is just too big.
I’ll fourth or fifth the Kilz recommendation. We bought our house from heavy smokers and that stuff worked well for us. We washed the walls and then painted with two coats of Kilz.
We got rid of the carpets and some cloth-covered vertical blinds, plus all the nasty stinky curtains the previous owners left behind.
If you just paint with regular paint, the stains on walls can bleed through. I can’t remember if it’s the tar or nicotine stain, but something bleeds through. vetbridge, I bought a car from a smoker last year. I’ll second the baking soda idea and throw in Febreze. Spray some Febreze in it, with the windows open and let it sit. It’s not overly-perfumey smelling, but does kill the smoke odor. My car just reeked and now it’s’s fine.