Can you smell the smoke in this room?

Originally published on 7/9/16, revised on 9/24/16 after work was complete. It worked! We successfuly removed all of the smoke smell from the house. Our realtor came back after the work was done, and noted that maybe the smoke wasn’t that bad to begin with. We took this as a compliment that it was so much improved that it was hard to remember how horrible it was before.

We are less than a month away from starting renovations on the ranch (house). The first item on the agenda is to address the most pressing issue: the cigarette smoke smell.

We are oddly grateful for this challenge because it did make this  house more accessible to us in a competitive Portland housing market. It’s a great house with fantastic interior space and good bones, but the first thing you notice when you walk in the door is the general stinky stale smoke smell (ew!)

After speaking with people who have had success in removing smoke, and a ton of internet research, I put together the following plan:

Note: Ventilate the house as much as possible during all the below steps (except for running the ozone machine)

Remove carpet
1. Remove all fabric surfaces: carpet, drapes, window coverings. There may be a way to keep the carpet, but we would rather have the hardwood floors anyway. The carpet has got to go (seems like a good general rule of thumb to start over on floor coverings anyway). I suspect that if you keep any smoky furniture, it will pretty much always smell like smoke unless you really shampoo the crap out of it. If you have non-fabric furniture, a wipe down similar to what you would do on the walls should  work.

9/24/16 Note: Removing the carpet first was definitely the right move. Taking the carpet out took a lot of energy, but not much time (a couple hours to take out the carpet, and several hours to pull out all the staples left in the hardwood). We initially stored the old carpet in the garage instead of the driveway since we thought it was going to rain before it got hauled away. The next day, we opened the garage and it stunk horribly like smoke. Even though the carpets had been cleaned before we moved in, I bet that probably 60% of the smoke smell was in the carpet.

2. If you have blinds & screens, remove them, wipe with distilled white wine vinegar, and hose them off thoroughly outside

Run an ozone machine
3. Our smoke situation is bad enough that we are going to rent an ozone machine which neutralizes the molecules (or does something sciency) to eliminate the smoke smell. You should run the ozone machine for several hours when the space is unoccupied. Run it for a day before painting and refinishing floors, and again after. You can rent these at Home Depot, etc.

9/24/16 Note: Because all the other steps we took worked so well, we still haven’t run an ozone machine, and I’m not sure we will. Hotels & restaurants use them because ozone machines work well if you want to knock out the smell quickly and you can’t remove all fabrics & clean all surfaces.

Wash surfaces
4. Wash the walls and ceilings thoroughly. There are a couple different ways of doing this:

A. For lighter cleaning/more environmentally-friendly: Use diluted distilled white wine vinegar on rags to wipe down all surfaces & rinse thoroughly.

B. For more pervasive smoke smells, use TSP (trisodium phosphate). Mix 1 cup of TSP to 20 cups of water or buy a TSP spray to apply to your walls and wipe down thoroughly a washcloth. Wear gloves and protective eyewear for this whole process.

9/24/16 Note: Washing surfaces took a ton of time & energy, but I’m so glad we did it. The walls were literally dingy brown with smoke. The brushes & dirty water were dark brown to black. It was so gross – wiping down the walls and being splattered by the dirty brown water. EW! I recommend a mask, long sleeves, & of course protective eyewear. The other thing to keep in mind here is you have to do all surfaces, including ceilings, inside of closets, brick, cabinets, etc.

Prime & Paint
5. Paint a coat of a deodorizing primer on the walls & ceiling. I’ve heard of both Kilz and Bulleye, will come back to report on pros and cons.

9/24/16 Note: This worked amazingly well after TSPing the walls. We used oil-based Bullzeye tinted primer. It stunk to high heaven and you have to ventilate thoroughly and wear a mask, but it worked really well to seal the walls. Get a bunch of disposable brushes for this part, since oil-based paints require mineral spirits to clean brushes. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

6. Paint as your normally would. Here are a few resources on whites and grays (my favorite paint colors!)

• Best whites
• Best grays

Filter the air
7. Get a good air filter and run it 24/7. I like Rabbit Air and we run one whether we are de-smoking or not to keep out allergens,  but they are pricey, so any filter with a charcoal filter or odor eliminator will work

9/24/16 Addition: Have the HVAC system professionally cleaned
8. We called some HVAC specialists and let them know what the deal was with the smoke smell in the house. For about $300, they cleaned & deodorized all of the ductwork. This is definitely not something we had the equipment to do ourselves. We also replaced the central air filter, and now the forced air that comes out of the vents no longer contains the ghosts of cigarettes past.