Cigarette smell and a new home
Posted by kendahl (kendahl.johnson@usafa.af.mil) on Wed, Jul 25, 01 at 10:37
| We are buying a home and the previous owner was a chain smoker. We are repainting the walls and replacing the carpets and drapes. What else do we need to do in order to ensure that the smell of cigarette smoke doesn't return? Any help is appreciated... |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: ambergem (ambergem@earthlink.net) on Wed, Jul 25, 01 at 18:59
| Greetings, I was told that the ceiling gets the tar and nicotine the worst as the exhaled smoke finds its way up to the ceiling. We had professionals look at my MIL's house - a self-built beautiful ranch, imported wood floors, equisite, but the ceilings were ruined by smoke!!! They wanted alot of money to work on it (I'm not sure what they were going to use) to get the inbeded tar and nicotine out. Sorry not much help, but you may have to deal with the ceiling. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: dianasdolls (My Page) on Mon, Jul 30, 01 at 7:11
| I detest cigarette smoke myself. I forbid anyone to smoke in my home and avoid it when out if at all possible. I am allergic to it and have had to remove cigarette smoke from some purchases I've made online where the seller never mentioned they smoked. ambergem is right, you might want to re-sheetrock or repaint the ceiling, depending on the finish of the ceiling of course. If it's not a popcorn ceiling and is textured like the walls, repainting should be fine. Be sure to thoroughly clean any non-carpeted floors, such as wood or lineoleum. You may want to get the furnace ducts vacuumed out/cleaned (call a furnace place for a quote - ours was around $200). If any insulation was exposed to the living part of the house, such as an unfinshed room or non-sheetrocked garage, than it may need replaced to get rid of the smell. The best thing to use is your nose. You may look strange, but sniff everything in the house you're not sure about for cigarette smell. If it smells, clean or replace it. When you can't smell it anymore, then you should be completely free of the smell, permanently. Good luck! Diana |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: Marilyn (erak1@hotmail.com) on Fri, Aug 17, 01 at 11:02
| I also bought a house from two chain smokers. I regret that I did. I am not bothered with the smell anymore. That eventually dissapates. But, they painted over all the nicotine walls. Also check the wall outlets. Darn hard to clean them, only recourse is replace them. I have not replaced ours yet, and it disgusts me everytime I look at them. I can't tell you how many rolls of paper it took to clean the kitchen cabinets. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: Liz (quality@sssnet.com) on Fri, Aug 17, 01 at 11:27
| You can clean the outlet covers, soak them in hot water and bleach; provided they're not wood. If they are wood paint them. I'd use Kilz on the ceiling, covers the stains. A good airing out of the house should help too. You could try Ozium in the furnace registers and replace the filter. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: grammyof14 (My Page) on Mon, Jul 29, 02 at 17:00
| What about getting the smoke our of wood furniture, bought a piece online and it has that odor. Not bad mind you but enough. I don't allow smoking in "my" house |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| Hi Kendall... I think you will be in pretty good shape when you are finished. Just one additional thought. If you have forced air heat, you may want to wipe out your cold air returns and heat vents, because the ciggy smoke circulates through and leaves residue. Grammy: You can take a damp cloth with a small amount of detergent and wipe your wood furniture for the hard surfaces. For the upholstery, rent a Rug Doctor carpet cleaner and use the furniture attachment with some ammonia in hte cleaning solution. That will do it. If the smell isn't too bad, just faint, you can mix 50/50 water and clear ammonia and lightly mist the cushions, etc. Sometimes that's enough to make it liveable. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| We were both heavy smokers and gave up the nasty habit 4 years ago because of the damage smoke did to the walls, wallpaper, furniture, etc. The constant expense of re-painting and decorating finally got to us!!! Anyhow, either your painters or the store you are buying paint (if a do-it-yourself job) from will know what you have to put on the walls prior to painting. The painter's hate the smell of it, but it sure works. We've always hired it done, so don't know the name of the product, but there are more than one. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| you need to seal in the smell like a waterstain-- use kilz/bullseye stuff as a primer after cleaning and before painting |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| If smoke odors and stains bother you, why then would you even consider buying a house from a smoker? It should be obvious when you inspect the house if a smoker lived or lives there! After all, it's a buyers market and if enough people refuse to buy into these homes, it will force the owners to do the repairs themselves in order to sell. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: kasefofane (My Page) on Wed, Aug 7, 02 at 14:32
| In some places it's a seller's market and there isn't time to be picky! We just closed on a house we bought as an income property and it was only during repainting that we realized that you can't paint over years of smoke staining. After 24 hours it comes right through the new white ceiling paint to make it beige. No smell anymore but it is frustrating not to have white ceilings. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| I've experienced this same problem - three coats of latex-based ceiling paint, and the next day, you can see the brown bleading though. Disgusting. To paint over smoke stained surfaces, use a fast drying oil based primer/sealer, or better yet, a lacquer based primer/sealer, to seal the surface. "Kilz" is one good brand that comes to mind. However, use plenty of ventilation while applying as the odor is very strong (open all windows, and put fans in them to exhaust the air), don't stop painting once you start (or the paint will immediately dry on the brush or roller), and be prepared to throw away the rollers and brushes at the end of each day of painting - my painting experience indicates that lacquer based products are next to impossible to completely clean off of brushes - but the lacquer based products will stop any stain from bleeding through. Once dry, top coat with two coats of high quality latex paint - I use Benjamin-Moore. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| I had this problem when I purchased an SUV from a heavy smoker....I used febreeze heavy duty/deep cleaning to spray the entire cloth interior including the roof...I also used ammonia to clean the steering wheel and dash. This seemed to work, the car no longer smells, but I'm not sure how ammonia would work on wood or sheetrock.... |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| Just a thought. After hearing what damage cigarette smoke does to a house, don't you wonder how anyone can suck that stuff into their lungs every day? |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: Nestor_Kelebay (My Page) on Sun, Sep 22, 02 at 2:06
| Ken: This is my first time in this forum, and perhaps it's good that I read this post. I own a small apartment block, and I can tell you cigarette smoke is not hard to clean off of walls. The problem is that because it gets everywhere, you have to clean everywhere. Mr. Clean and water will remove it from the walls. Use a sponge mop the clean the ceiling with Mr. Clean and a squeegee on a pole to collect that dirty water so it drips onto the floor. Then use clean water to rinse with the sponge mop. I use a tool made especially for cleaning walls and ceilings called a Taski "Vertica" tool, which is basically a rubber squeegee that you can attach a vaccuum hose to to collect the liquids the squeegee wipes off. Once the walls and ceilings are clean, most of the remaining cigarette odor will be coming from the carpet, and you can remove that by shampooing. Cigarette smoke dissolves readily in water, which is why it'll stain latex paints. Launder the drapes. Also wipe off both sides of doors. You can tell cigarette smoke staining on walls because it will result in small brown drops forming on the walls about a foot from the ceiling. Removing cigarette smoke is hard only because it gets on everything so you have to clean everything, not because it's difficult to remove from a surface. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| One of the most difficult rooms to remove cigarette smell from is a bathroom, and the more area that's tiled, the worse it is to remove. Not because of the tile but because of the grout, especially if the grout was never sealed. My late husband was a heavy smoker and in particular used the main bathroom (which he completely tiled in brown and beige so that it "wouldn't show anything"!) as a major smoking room. Even after serious scrubbing, the bathroom still permanently smelled after almost a year of no one smoking in it! And if anyone was foolish enough to run a hot bath or a shower, the stench was unbearable because the steam just seemed to release it even more from the odor-saturated grout. I can't even describe how disgusting it was. For a tiled smokers' bathroom area, then, I would recommend nothing less than a rip-out of the walls.
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RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| I had a similar problem and after trying just about every cleaning product known to mankind, I tried Formula 409 and it did an AMAZING job, especially on the woodwork. I highly recommend it for anyone facing a similar problem. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: sycamore_guy (My Page) on Wed, Dec 4, 02 at 11:14
| All I can say is good luck. Long ago we bought a house from chain smokers. Ripped out every carpet. Scubbed every hard surface with TSP (still available then). Sealed with Kilz. Painted or wallpapered. Tiled some floors. Five years later you could still smell a hint of smoke if the house was sealed up for a few days. We got the house at a good price, and sold it at a profit, but I suspect it STILL smells of smoke for whoever has it now. I think the smoke penetrated into the framing. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| The best way to hide/mask the smell of cigarette smoke is to sit down in your BIG easy chair and light up a BIG FAT Cigar. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| I'm amazed at all this. I smoked for 15 years in my current house and there was always smokers there. After quitting the smell dissipated fairly quickly and we've never had any problems. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| Johnbron - best anwser I've ever seen on this board! I long for the days of smoking the occasional cigar in my house (5 year old girl and 2 year old boy have put a stop to this). Mike K |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| I'm amazed at all this. I smoked for 15 years in my current house and there was always smokers there. After quitting the smell dissipated fairly quickly and we've never had any problems.. You also may have lost your sense of smell, worm. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| Actually, I think that the smell of cigarette smoke is often MORE offensive to ex-smokers than non-smokers. I have no trouble smelling cigarette smoke. Anyway, if people say the smell is still there, I guess it is. I was just commenting that it's hard for me to believe that after more than a couple of months, it's still there. Especially after painting, etc. I guess I'm of no help here. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
- Posted by: CindyBelleZ6NJ (My Page) on Mon, Apr 7, 03 at 18:07
| All of these suggestions are good ones, here is one more-wash everything you can down with Simple Green, don't dilute it too much. Then do paint with a stain blocking primer first, like Kilz or Bin. |
RE: Cigarette smell and a new home
| I used a regular old everyday mop and light bleach solution to clean the ceilings of smoke. Worked great, didn't take long and no ladder to fall off! An old farmers trick is to put a drop of black paint in the white paint to keep it from yellowing, don't know if it will work in this situation. Also, try a drop of vanilla (real) in the paint, smells better than paint. |