So, I need some help here. When our dog was a brand-new puppy, still innocent of the concept of potty training, he spent the night in my stepson’s room, and ended up peeing on the hardwood floors every night. Naively, my wife and I assumed that the pee wouldn’t be able to seep into anything, and we’d just clean it up in the morning and go on with life. Well, the details don’t matter, but now, a year or so later, his room stinks of dog pee. Bad. Like we’d be embarrassed to have family sleep in there. We’re pretty sure it’s soaked down into the boards somewhere. We’re also dirt poor, living the life of grad students right now.
Here are the options, as I see them.
1: Find some sort of magical liquid treatment that will make the smell disappear permanently. We’ve tried a few commercial products that haven’t worked, possibly because they all seem to be designed to treat carpet and upholstery. I’ve done some googling and reading up on this and seen all sorts of advice, but a lot of them talk about treating “spots”. We don’t know where the pee is, so we have to treat the whole floor. This is the first bit of advice I need - can anyone recommend a product or treatment that will actually work?
2: My wife seems to think that if we sand down the floor and refinish it, it should do the trick. I’m of the opinion that if it’s soaked into the wood, simply removing the top layer and sealing it won’t fix the problem, which leads to
3: Rip up the whole thing and replace it. I worry that even this might not be completely effective, if it’s gotten into the subfloor or some little bit of wood that we miss, like a baseboard.
Obviously, I’d much rather avoid options 2 and 3 if we can, but we’ve got to fix this. Any advice?
Repeat as necessary until smell comes out or treat with Nature’s Miracle a couple of times and then start making it a habit of washing the floors with the squirt and mop version of Murphy’s Oil Soap.
I dealt with the exact same thing a while ago. #3 will have to be done and I had to replace a section of the subfloor too. I had to fix an area of about 4 feet by 6 feet. I removed everything to the joists, replaced the subfloor then instead of reinstalling the hardwood, I put in some slate flooring. The repaired area was next to a sliding door going to the back yard.
I don’t know of anything for #1 to work and #2 will only work if the pee did not seep between the flooring.
Definitely try the Nature’s Miracle before you go ripping up and sanding anything! Heck, you can even skip the ultraviolet light for the first pass if you put an even layer over everything.