Cigarette Smoke in a Home

[ma-skis.com]

I'm currently looking at buying a new place, one particular place showed up hit a lot of checkboxes but it came with a very distinct cigarette smoke smell. I'm quite curious to know what people's experience has been trying to remove the smell from a home.

no carpet, I'm assuming most of it is in the paint / ceiling.

[Buzzard]

Originally Posted by ma-skis.com

I'm currently looking at buying a new place, one particular place showed up hit a lot of checkboxes but it came with a very distinct cigarette smoke smell. I'm quite curious to know what people's experience has been trying to remove the smell from a home.

no carpet, I'm assuming most of it is in the paint / ceiling.

New paint. Walls and ceiling.

[Caged Great]

Kilz paint is awesome for this.

Locks in the odors and doesn't allow anything to permeate

[photon]

Definitely Kilz, not just paint. I've done this to a few places and never had the smell come out.

Incidentally this also works for replacing flooring where an animal has pee'd on the carpet. Rip up the carpet, kilz the plywood where the stains are, then put in the replacement.

[Yanda]

You can rent air scrubers from most home depots for about $100/day

[OMG!WTF!]

Nothing in the way of Kilz or Zinzer worked for me. But an ozone generating machine did pretty well get rid of the smell.

[Locke]

[Rhettzky]

Get the furnace cleaned too. When we bought our place the furnace cleaner showed us the fan and it was caked with yellow gunk from smoke. Totally disgusting.

Also, paint or hire a cleaner to scrub the walls before you move in. Then shampoo any carpets and wash all windows, floors, etc. Once they get the gross furniture out it makes a difference too.

[calgarywinning]

Generally, probably, more than likely skip buying all together.

[Fuzz]

My place's basement was a cigar smoking lounge for what I am guessing was 20 old men for 30 years. The rest of the house was fine. I washed the walls with TSP and removed buckets of yellow goo from the walls. Removed wallpaper form some areas, and repainted walls and ceilings. The walls have wood panelling halfway up which I couldn't do much about. That took are of 99% of the smell almost immediately.

It is basically gone now, but even 10 years on, when we go for vacation and shut the furnace off, the basement smells a bit like stale smoke. It goes away as soon as we get some air flow though, so it's not a big deal.

[Methanolic]

Originally Posted by Caged Great

Kilz paint is awesome for this.

Locks in the odors and doesn't allow anything to permeate

^ I agree but would STRONGLY recommend you wash everything first with diluted TSP otherwise risk areas where the paint wont adhere.

[Fuzz]

Ya, TSP is a must. If it is like my walls, prepare a 5 gallon pail. You are going to get so much orange goo off the walls you could probably sell it to use in vaporizers.

[photon]

We didn't even bother with the pail, just used the sink we had to clean the water so many times. We'd TSP a section, and 30 minutes later it was like more had come out of the wall, we'd TSP it again and the water would be just as dirty. Blech.

I've also used it for cooking smells, we did one place, walls and ceilings, and the kitchen still smelled strongly even though we'd cleaned it and painted the cabinets (not for the smell they needed it anyway. Until I checked on top of the cabinets, there was a layer of goo (vaporized grease and whatever) on top

Scraped it all off (which was unpleasant), tsp'ed the tops and kilz'd it, and within a few days the smell was gone.

[Top Shelf]

you will never get rid of the smell entirely. move on i would say

[Fuzz]

If you like the place, ask for $5000-$10 000 off due to the smell. Might be worth it. Is the home empty? If it has been sitting sealed up, it probably smells worse than it would when you move in from stale air.

[Sliver]

People still smoke in their house? That's so trashy.

[woob]

Personally, I'd stay away. Yeah, you can get the smell out almost completely, but what I found was on hot summer days where the house is warm, the smell always seemed to seep out into the air. Having been there, done that, I wouldn't buy a smoker's house again.

[DoubleF]

Useless advice: filling white vinegar water combo mix into a spray bottle and spraying that into fabric helps get rid of bad odors.

Useless advice 2: some people recommend putting a drop or two of aromatic oils onto your furnace filter and allowing that to slowly permeate the home. I've never felt this to be useful info, but perhaps someone else might.

Useless advice 3: http://www.calgaryozone.com/home-odours/ No idea if this actually works. Reads like a snake oil testimony to me.

[peter12]

What is this orange goo seeping out of walls that people keep talking about? Was your previous home infested with demons?

[Fuzz]

Just smokers. It's nasty stuff.