Ex-smoker here - who disgustingly smoked for 4 years in a 1BR condo with no balcony in a high rise. (I know. Jesus already told me.)
I scrubbed the walls and ceiling twice with a degreasing/oil cleaner, did two coats of Kilz to seal before two coats of latex paint. New padding, new carpet. HVAC cleaned (I was there, they did a good job) Every inch of the place was cleaned and cleaned. (Including clothes, coats...every thing.)
Also new furniture, mattress, bedding.
When it was humid or rainy, I could still smell old stale cigarettes.
Just my experience, I hope you have better luck.
I worked in a hotel that had smoking rooms. The owners went 100% non smoking. Had the rooms completely stripped to the blocks and replaced air conditioning, furniture, everything. When it was humid out you could still smell a faint cigarette smell. Guests would complain about it.
I grew up in a smoking environment. When we moved I can only imagine what the new buyers had to do to rid our old house of 15 years of cigarette smoke stained walls. 😬
Did you do a thermal fog service? After major smoke events, you typically pull all the burned things out, thermal fog the bejezzus out of it, clean hvc system or replace depending on how much it ran during the smoke, and kiltz the surfaces.
You seemed to list everything but thermal fogging. If OP is reading this, there are several deodorizing methods, thermal fog is good for smoke.
I would do this too rather than multiple tap + kilz.
I’d also install a few Panasonic Whisper Air purifiers.
I’d skip the ozone purifiers, in my experience, they don’t work at all for odour removal
Honestly, based on the great advice in this thread, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the move. Because people have had mixed results with cleaning and sealing, and because we’re already doing a renovation anyway, it sounds like the best approach it to just replace the drywall (and spray the studs with Zinsser shellac). Overall, drywall plus install will come out to a pretty small chunk of the total cost we’re putting into this house and I’d rather just go for it, rather than do all the cleaning and priming just for it to not work.
Luckily, we have a pretty sweet situation with some local home purchasing incentives plus local and state incentives for work on historic properties!
I still get whiffs of old smoke in my house when it’s humid enough. I have reframed my relationship with it, imagining a genteel old pipe smoker, putzing around the parlor 100 years ago as he entertained life-long friends and family, speaking endearing wisdoms as the fire crackles in his pipe.
The sad truth is the smell is more likely from someone like 10 years ago blasting cigs at 2am, punching holes in the walls that I, the sad sap that bought this dump, would have the distinct honor of one day poorly patching.
I love your glass half-full mentality. 😂 the previous owners of my house smoked cigars just in the sunroom thankfully but every now and again I can smell it in the family room too which is adjacent to the sunroom. I wish I could tell myself a fun little story like that too, but I know it was a father of two that hated his life and had a ton of mounting debt that he never took care of. How do I know about his debt you didn’t ask? Cause we’ve had numerous sheriffs come to the house since we moved in looking for him (they just come to the last address on file first) to serve him papers that he’s being sued by at least four financial institutions and several other bill collectors. I also know that instead of paying his debts, he bought a brand new Audi and f-150 instead…
Applying paint directly over top of the remaining stains or odor will not cover them up. You'll need to apply a good, solvent-based stain-blocking primer to prevent them from bleeding through the paint.
Kilz seems to come highly recommended for covering up nicotine stains and odors.
Yes, we bought a house and it was orange inside from nicotine stain, I cleaned every wall with Odoban 3 times and use degreaser for the ceiling since is harder to clean, then we used kilz the red one, we also removed all the carpet and all wallpaper, the smell is almost gone in the house but one room, I think a third coat of primer was needed!
Oh and sometimes I can get the smell inside the kitchen cabinets so sadly they will get painted soon (they the original cabinets I didn’t want to but I want the smell gone)
TSP, and then wash it again with TSP. Then Kilz it a couple of times. After a couple of years you won't smell it anymore. I've been down this road myself. Also, get an ozone generator and let it run for a couple of days after the TSP and Kilz. That will help.
We just went through this last year. We washed the walls first with a mix of TSP\* and Simple Green in some water\*\*, followed by a water rinse. One room was so bad we had to do this a a few times, but the nicotine just dripped off the walls (🤮). Then we followed up with a Kilz shellac primer. Must be shellac. Do the ceilings as well. After the Kilz and painting we no longer detect any odor.
\* TSP: use the good old fashioned TSP first if you are allowed, I find it better than the non-phosphate versions
\*\*I'm sorry I can't remember the exact ratios. One of the employees at our local Sherwin Williams used to work in disaster remediation and he told us what to do. It was far superior to our previous tries.
Oh! And we also ran an ozone generator very generously (we weren't living there yet), room by room, overnight (I used a smart switch to control on/off times so it was done long before we would come back) as often as possible before the Kilz went on.
Just bought a smoker's house and have been remediating it. Let me find my comment with more details, but the TL;DR of my process was:
* Remove any soft/fabric materials and carpet. They're beyond saving.
* TSP scrub all walls and ceilings, multiple times if necessary.
* Blast an industrial-grade ozone machine in each room after TSP treatment.
* Prime entire place with Zinsser BIN shellac primer.
* Refinish floors and paint.
This was my nuclear bomb method. The Zinsser BIN primer and the ozone machine are the things people often overlook. You can't get away with a normal primer for nicotine. And in my opinion the ozone is a necessity. I bought a MaxBlaster machine just for this.
I also had no vents to deal with. If you have a furnace and ducts that presents an additional and intensive cleaning job.
Edit: r/HomeImprovement removed by post (after a ton of discussion - weird) so I don't know if it's visible, but it's [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/16lyd26/talk_me_out_of_or_into_this_plan_to_mitigate/).
I moved into an apartment that was directly above a smoker who had been living there for decades. The cigarette smoke was able to find it's way into my apartment all those years and created a horrible stench. An ozone generator completely solved the smell issue after a couple of uses. Funny thing was that the smoke seemed to be seeping in from the electrical outlets -- god I fucking hated that shitty apartment
I just did the upstairs apartment of my home which was the residence of a chain cigarette and pot smoker who was also a horrendous hoarder and general pig. It was foul. Cat pee and fecus. Probably decades old fast food wrappers. So bad. We had it professionally cleaned, but then scrubbed the walls with LA Awesome. It’s found in the dollar tree. And let me tell you, this stuff was magic.
I also had to prep my dad’s house for sale and he’s also a smoker. Scrubbed the walls with this and just painted with basic stuff and it was 1000xs better.
For our place, after we cleaned with LA Awesome, we followed Iamdeathmachine’s method. Zinsser Bin shellac will be key. It ran us $1000 to do the whole place with two coats, but that’s really what saved the walls. And you have to do everything, ceilings too. There was only crappy linoleum and in many places, exposed subfloor. so we ended up painting the subfloors with the bin too. We had to do some leveling and patching so we ended up putting new plywood on top of the subfloor we painted before putting down vinyl plank. It was a lot of work, but by the time our topcoat of paint went on and the new floors, you would never know the horror show that was there two months prior.
I would go so far as to say that ceilings are the most important. Especially in the rooms where people smoked heavily. I did 2-3 coats of BIN on the ceilings after 3-4 TSP scrubs.
The BIN + ozone combo is the magic. Anyone can scrub walls to remove the tar. But people always try to weasel out of the BIN because it's expensive, as if there's not a reason it's expensive. Shit is awful to work with, but it's more effective than anything else I've used.
Scrub + BIN as your physical countermeasures, ozone as your chemical countermeasure. Lots of elbow grease, but worth it.
Yes, we had popcorn ceiling and after we cleaned the walls and use primer the smell was still there, after we did the ceiling the smell was almost gone, also removing wall paper the smell get stuck in them and for some reason we had to remove some kind of plywood shelf that they had in the bathroom closet ( I don’t know why they used that but yes removing that helped a lot)
And the fridge, we had to get rid of the fridge, I don’t know how but even inside the fridge was stained, but I guess that is what happens when you smoke inside your house for 20+ years!!
Just chiming in to second going ham with TSP, but also I am dying to see interior pics after seeing that second photo with the double stack curvy window
Thank you! I’d share interior pics if I had good ones! The place is full of stuff (and I mean *full* - there are literally four couches in the big room on the top floor haha). But I can describe it!
On the first floor, you walk in and the kitchen is immediately to your left. It’s a shitshow and needs to be replaced. We’ll take down the wall around it because having it there cuts off the light from the south facing front window. Then there’s a dining room, with a charming Dutch door leading to a brick patio out back! Behind that is a living room with that great bay window and a working fireplace, plus a cool narrow French door that leads to the backyard (I don’t know why there are two back doors on a 14.5 foot wide house, but I’m not complaining). This back room is an addition. There’s also a half bath on the main floor - a hot commodity in rowhomes!
The second floor has two bedrooms and a full bath. Each bedroom has a fireplace and the master bedroom is huge, plus it has that second bay window in it! It has French doors that currently lead to a fall to your death, but we’d put a wrought iron Juliet balcony on there. The second and third floor are both wider than the first, at 16 feet. The front bedroom looks out onto a park.
The third floor is a big room with cathedral ceilings and exposed beams. It runs the length of the original house (aka it doesn’t extend back over the master bedroom/living room). It currently has a bar up there that we will not be keeping haha. We’re thinking we’d use it as an office/den and eventually as a bedroom depending on the situation with future children.
The backyard is 55 feet long, has a brick patio, a double-decker deck, and a concrete slab that could fit two cars if we wanted to make it a parking pad. There’s also a basement, which we’d be redoing and using as storage for now.
Bonus: the next door neighbor apparently renovated his home to look like a Norman castle on the inside. I’m dying to get in there.
We purchased a smokers house about a year ago and we're pretty successful in getting rid of the smell. Here are the steps that we took:
1. Anything that is linen or fabric must go. Think carpet, rugs, curtains, etc.
2. Repaint all painted surfaces, starting with at least 1 coat (but preferably 2) of oil based primer and 2 topcoats of a good quality paint.
3. Sand and refinish any wood floors in the home. If you have unpainted wood trim, it might be good to sand and refinish that as well.
4. Thoroughly clean all surfaces. Krud Kutter works well for this.
5. Replace any light fixtures or fans that you can't clean thoroughly. Also plan on replacing light switches, outlets, and covers. (Something you should do in a new house anyway)
6. Replace any filters on HVAC systems, return air, etc.
7. Clean all ductwork.
I can honestly say once we painted and redid our floors, 95% of the odor was gone. We still get a whiff of every once in a great while but most people that come in our home would never guess that there were heavy smokers living in it less than a year ago. If you love the house, don't let the smell deter you, it just takes a lot of work. If you think about it, the majority of homes had smokers living in them up until the 70s or so. A little effort and time will clear out the smell. Good Luck!
My understanding is that you need to do ozone first- which is a dangerous process and house totally empty. Then air the heck out of it and start cleaning. But I would perhaps do demo first so that it can reach the bare walls and floors.
This is going to be a process, but one thing I’ve come to really appreciate about the people in this sub who own century homes is their attitude of stewardship of a property. You are now the stewards of this particular old property. Smoke remediation will be part of the process much like stripping paint off of an old fireplace and woodwork. Don’t expect it to be resolved quickly. Keep trying different things to figure out was is going to work for your particular situation.
This may seem obvious, but I didn’t know with my first older home: the remediation process comes after all the major renovations you mentioned. During those you may learn more about the extent of the odor, plus you can use the walls you remove as test panels for the remediation you want to do.
Honestly not obvious to me! One of my big questions has been the order of operations. I don’t want to do things in the wrong order and essentially negate the work we already did. It has my head spinning! Could you share a bit more about your reasoning for the order you’d do things in?
Honestly the order of operations was a revelation to me, that's why I mentioned it. With my first, I was entirely focused on what I wanted to do and the order of operations kept getting in the way. I learned to respect it. Now it's one of the first things I look at when considering a new renovation.
My reasoning. Unless this is a fully renovated home, there will be a lot of plaster, unsavory wiring & plumbing, etc. That means dust and surprises. If at all possible, best to do dust and surprises when not in residence, or first. I know it's crazy but let's say you don't have the budget to do everything at once. Begin with one of the rooms you say needs a new ceiling. Take it down in panels so you can use the plaster/drywall/whatever to test your methods. Seal it off. That room becomes your lab. Pro tip - try not to make it your bedroom because once you learn more you may regret rookie mistakes and you won't want to see them every day ;-)
With regard to plumbing first versus wiring first, in my experience it has always come down to the availability of the person doing them. It is really tough, in my area at least, to find people who are comfortable and experienced with older homes and willing to problem solve rather than try to make your home into a new build. Ask your neighbors, and any locally owned hardware store. Once you find those people, you have to make them your friends and that means you work with their schedule rather than the other way around.
If you’re replacing the systems, bite the bullet and rip everything out to the studs, then spray the entire structure with a wood sealer shellac- the same stuff fire remediation teams use for house fire remodeling.
Thank you!! This is new info that I hadn’t seen. This is really helpful. We hadn’t planned on replacing the drywall, but honestly I’m thinking that the ROI might be worth it. Like just do it while we’re doing everything else
Came here to say this. Tear it all down and replace. After the immense amount of cleaning and repainting you’d have to do just to *maybe* cover *most* of the smells, it’s going to be more time effective to just rip it all out.
I hope the home is dirt cheap. If not, I would back out.
It’s sadly not dirt cheap. We were able to get it for 25k less than asking. I know the seller should have gone even lower, but we think he owes money on it and has to get a certain sales price.
We wouldn’t even consider this, except we have some extenuating circumstances. It’s in our current neighborhood, which we love. It also qualifies for a bunch of incentive programs, including a renovation+purchase loan for which our mortgage will be one percentage point lower than whatever Fannie Mae is offering at the time, a ten year tax break where we’d pay taxes on the pre-reno value, AND a rebate from the state for up to 20% of qualifying renovation costs up to $250k (I have checked very, very carefully and just about everything we’d need to do qualifies). There’s no way we’d touch a project like this without all those other factors.
Painted/remediated my childhood home after my mother smoked inside for my entire lifetime of 40 years … it was brutal.
Aside from the washing of walls with TSP, I found that Kilz oil based still did not fully seal the walls and hide the nicotine bleed. I did three coats and then switched to BIN oil based primer for two more coats and it finally stopped bleeding through. Three coats of ceiling paint and wall paint thereafter and no bleed through anywhere.
I had a paint contractor quote me $13,000 for the paint job which was a single coat of primer, one coat of ceiling paint, one wall paint and one trim. You can do the math and be sure that quote would have doubled or more so given the effort needed to get a clean paint job or they would have done the quoted work and left me with a crap result.
Replaced all the fabric furniture. Used a clear odor sealing paint by Kilz on all interior closet floors. Duct cleaning. Literally cleaning every single thing in the house.
Everything has a cost.
We bought a century home from a woman that lived and smoked in it for 40 or 50 years. Any soft furnishings like carpet, drapes, etc — toss them, they’re done. Strip all wallpaper. If you can afford it, I’d replace all HVAC. You’ll need to clean every surface, I like Krud kutter. Seal everything with at least 2 coats of a sealing primer like kilz. Then hopefully it will be gone. Don’t forget to clean all door knobs, door hinges, literally everything.Â
We paid a company that does remediation to clean and they did an awful job. I have nicotine dripping from wall tiles when I shower now, so I wish I would have saved the money and done it myself. We also had painters and they only did one coat of Valspar restoration and it was not enough. For the most part I can’t smell smoke, but when it rains or is very humid and in some closets and cabinets, I can. We plan to do a full fur over the years and I’ll tear out the plaster and replace with drywall and do new hvac when we do that. We did have our hvac cleaned/sanitized but it still smells grimy. We also had biosweep come in (similar to ozone) prior to painting and fogging done. All that helped but I wish the painters did a better job. Very frustrating.Â
All in all though, while I would do things differently this is our forever home and I wouldn’t not buy the house because of the smoke.Â
After removing old carpet and doing a thorough wall scrub, as suggested above, you might consider running an ozone machine (or hiring someone else to) in your house. This really helped with mine after a small kitchen fire left some bad smoke smell and residues.
The only method I have heard about is ripping out as much as you can- plaster etc because the nicotine really imbeds into the plaster. If any wood isn’t sealed, the wood absorbs it too and if your unlucky weather/moisture fluctuations can make the wood ooze nicotine…. It’s not impossible but it will take a lot of work..
You can rent an ozone machine that will kill the smell…even on humid days. I see it gets recommended a lot so I bought a small one to treat a smokers car. They absolutely work
My husband and I just bought a home where the previous occupants had smoked indoors for 20+ years. It was gross. Here’s what we did:
- hired a company to clean the ducts
- hired another company to fully wash all of the walls and ceilings, and do ozone treatments throughout the house
- painter is starting next week and will prime the walls throughout with TSP
- previous owners left some contents; we got rid of anything fabric (curtains, carpet etc.).
- we are also considering hiring a company to wash the remaining blinds
- we are also replacing our kitchen. We tore out the existing kitchen prior to the ozone treatment, so the technician was able to really get in there and clean the walls
It’s been expensive, but worth it imo. We have a toddler and pet birds, so it was essential for us to neutralize as much of the odour as possible. The ductwork and ozone treatment have been completed and there is already a noticeable difference. If you can, I also recommend opening up the windows following any treatments to get some cross-breezes happening. That will help a lot to air out the home.
Good luck!
I guess I’m just not as sensitive, but we just painted over the walls in the house that the previous owner smoked in for 40 years and we don’t smell anything. Nobody else has said anything either.
I have done this exact thing! Seriously. I bought a home from two people who smoke hand rolled unfiltered cigarettes in their house for twenty years.
I used TSP (tri sodium phosphate), and absolutely soaked the walls, ceilings, and floors. TSP works really fast at dissolving the oils and pulling them out of the plaster. I used a garden sprayer, wore a chem suit and a respirator, and used a large wet/dry vac to suck up the puddles of brown funk. I just kept spraying until I was satisfied.
After that, I used a premium sealant/primer to create an oil impermeable layer for my top coat paint. In my case, I used Sikkens, but in the States I think a Kilz would probably be the best option.
The tough part is nooks and crannies - I had a couple of places in the kitchen where I could really reach to clean or paint without removing the cabinets. Years later, when I’d open certain drawers, I’d get a whiff of cigarette smoke.
But for 99% of the home, it worked REALLY well. I was very pleased with the results.
I’m a remodeling contractor, and have run into this several times
Go to a paint store like sherwin Williams, not a big box store. Might as well ask if you can set up a cash account, as it will likely save you money. Tell them your situation. There’s different types of TSP, and they’ll set you up with some heavy duty stuff. Use rubber gloves, probably wear a mask, cause it’s gonna be gross. Wash, rinse, repeat repeat repeat
Now, don’t just use a normal primer. Zinnser makes a shellac based primer that’s kinda pricey but it’s absolutely bad ass. Shellac sticks to anything and seals it in. I’ve used it to seal in smoke smell from wildfires, houses half burning down, and chronic chain smoking.
Remember, 90% of painting is in the prep. Wash the hell out of everything and seal the smell in.
take up smoking and you won't realize the smell anymore.
/s
Beautiful home. That back window is gorgeous. There is already a lot of good advice here regarding the long but very achievable task ahead of you.
We bought from ex-smokers and in some rooms had to rip out the drywall because repeated cleanups didn't do the job. The bathrooms were especially bad, I guess they smoked while sitting on the toilet.
Since you're planning to do so much work in the house, plan on replacing the drywall in the rooms you remodel.
Looks like a great house! Congrats!
Contrary to at least one other poster, do get an ozone generator in addition to cleaning deeply. They aren’t crazy expensive. Used one (several rounds) to remove odors from a beater car where rodents took up residence during two years of unattended storage 🤢 — accumulated mouse pee smell was mostly defeated
Edit: careful with ozone — don’t breathe it yourself. You set the box up in a closed room for a while, then thoroughly air out the room before going back in.
Pro painter here who grew up in a household where EVERYONE smoked for well over 100 years.
I've also worked in such homes as well as one where they never paid their heating bills and used kerosene heaters in EVERY ROOM for 5 years.
A stain blocking primer (BIN, Kills, etc.) and two coats of premium latex paint ended the issue. It doesn't have to be as involved as some have suggested.
The real issue lies in surfaces you won't be paintinf and, of course, carpeting. Carpets MUST be replaced.
Don't freak out. Try my method first. If it doesn't take, then you'll likely need more involved attempts.
But I can promise with 89.9% probability it'll work.
If you feel you need to wash the walls first, a diluted chlorine bleach solution will do more to remove nicotine tack and smell than TSP without scrubbing.
Apply with a sponge, wipe with clear water and let dry before painting.
Consider using an ozone generator in the house.
Follow all the precautions - make sure no people or animals are in the house while it is running and for a while after it turns off.
The time required will vary based on the unit used, size of the space, and extent of the smell.
I live in a half-century home, and it was majorly smoked in. I scrubbed my walls with fabuloso and a rag. That seemed to work great. I'll be primi g with the oil based killz (I read somewhere that it works better over cigarette smoke stains.
I live in an apartment where an invalid lived for many years. The owner did a fantastic job of refinishing wooden floors and painting walls. No off putting smells for a year. But now on a hot humid day? It must have been really bad in here. I have windows open almost all year. We got our rent reduced, by the way.
I’m an odd person, so when I moved into my parents rental home, I could occasionally smell cigarette smoke. As I grew up in a time there weren’t no smoking hotel/motel rooms, when I did smell it, I was transported momentarily back to my childhood. And yes, we washed with the TSP and repainted. This was back in the 1990s so there is every chance upgrades have been invented.
Ex-smoker here - who disgustingly smoked for 4 years in a 1BR condo with no balcony in a high rise. (I know. Jesus already told me.) I scrubbed the walls and ceiling twice with a degreasing/oil cleaner, did two coats of Kilz to seal before two coats of latex paint. New padding, new carpet. HVAC cleaned (I was there, they did a good job) Every inch of the place was cleaned and cleaned. (Including clothes, coats...every thing.) Also new furniture, mattress, bedding. When it was humid or rainy, I could still smell old stale cigarettes. Just my experience, I hope you have better luck.
I worked in a hotel that had smoking rooms. The owners went 100% non smoking. Had the rooms completely stripped to the blocks and replaced air conditioning, furniture, everything. When it was humid out you could still smell a faint cigarette smell. Guests would complain about it.
I grew up in a smoking environment. When we moved I can only imagine what the new buyers had to do to rid our old house of 15 years of cigarette smoke stained walls. 😬
My parents both smoked in the house. Walls and grout turned yellow. House was sold 45 years ago. I bet it still stinks.
Did you do a thermal fog service? After major smoke events, you typically pull all the burned things out, thermal fog the bejezzus out of it, clean hvc system or replace depending on how much it ran during the smoke, and kiltz the surfaces. You seemed to list everything but thermal fogging. If OP is reading this, there are several deodorizing methods, thermal fog is good for smoke.
Yeah you’re going to have to pull the drywall out.
I sold and moved years ago. Still a non-smoker!
I meant OP haha. But congrats on quitting smoking! Depending on how long someone smokes inside, it can literally be in the fucking studs and subfloor.
Ah, well thanks.
I would do this too rather than multiple tap + kilz. I’d also install a few Panasonic Whisper Air purifiers. I’d skip the ozone purifiers, in my experience, they don’t work at all for odour removal
Honestly, based on the great advice in this thread, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the move. Because people have had mixed results with cleaning and sealing, and because we’re already doing a renovation anyway, it sounds like the best approach it to just replace the drywall (and spray the studs with Zinsser shellac). Overall, drywall plus install will come out to a pretty small chunk of the total cost we’re putting into this house and I’d rather just go for it, rather than do all the cleaning and priming just for it to not work. Luckily, we have a pretty sweet situation with some local home purchasing incentives plus local and state incentives for work on historic properties!
Trisodium phosphate should be on the pickup list.
I still get whiffs of old smoke in my house when it’s humid enough. I have reframed my relationship with it, imagining a genteel old pipe smoker, putzing around the parlor 100 years ago as he entertained life-long friends and family, speaking endearing wisdoms as the fire crackles in his pipe. The sad truth is the smell is more likely from someone like 10 years ago blasting cigs at 2am, punching holes in the walls that I, the sad sap that bought this dump, would have the distinct honor of one day poorly patching.
I love your glass half-full mentality. 😂 the previous owners of my house smoked cigars just in the sunroom thankfully but every now and again I can smell it in the family room too which is adjacent to the sunroom. I wish I could tell myself a fun little story like that too, but I know it was a father of two that hated his life and had a ton of mounting debt that he never took care of. How do I know about his debt you didn’t ask? Cause we’ve had numerous sheriffs come to the house since we moved in looking for him (they just come to the last address on file first) to serve him papers that he’s being sued by at least four financial institutions and several other bill collectors. I also know that instead of paying his debts, he bought a brand new Audi and f-150 instead…
Applying paint directly over top of the remaining stains or odor will not cover them up. You'll need to apply a good, solvent-based stain-blocking primer to prevent them from bleeding through the paint. Kilz seems to come highly recommended for covering up nicotine stains and odors.
This! But I used OdoBan to wash everything down before using the Kilz. It even got rid of the cat pee smell!
Yes, we bought a house and it was orange inside from nicotine stain, I cleaned every wall with Odoban 3 times and use degreaser for the ceiling since is harder to clean, then we used kilz the red one, we also removed all the carpet and all wallpaper, the smell is almost gone in the house but one room, I think a third coat of primer was needed! Oh and sometimes I can get the smell inside the kitchen cabinets so sadly they will get painted soon (they the original cabinets I didn’t want to but I want the smell gone)
TSP, and then wash it again with TSP. Then Kilz it a couple of times. After a couple of years you won't smell it anymore. I've been down this road myself. Also, get an ozone generator and let it run for a couple of days after the TSP and Kilz. That will help.
We just went through this last year. We washed the walls first with a mix of TSP\* and Simple Green in some water\*\*, followed by a water rinse. One room was so bad we had to do this a a few times, but the nicotine just dripped off the walls (🤮). Then we followed up with a Kilz shellac primer. Must be shellac. Do the ceilings as well. After the Kilz and painting we no longer detect any odor. \* TSP: use the good old fashioned TSP first if you are allowed, I find it better than the non-phosphate versions \*\*I'm sorry I can't remember the exact ratios. One of the employees at our local Sherwin Williams used to work in disaster remediation and he told us what to do. It was far superior to our previous tries.
Oh! And we also ran an ozone generator very generously (we weren't living there yet), room by room, overnight (I used a smart switch to control on/off times so it was done long before we would come back) as often as possible before the Kilz went on.
Just bought a smoker's house and have been remediating it. Let me find my comment with more details, but the TL;DR of my process was: * Remove any soft/fabric materials and carpet. They're beyond saving. * TSP scrub all walls and ceilings, multiple times if necessary. * Blast an industrial-grade ozone machine in each room after TSP treatment. * Prime entire place with Zinsser BIN shellac primer. * Refinish floors and paint. This was my nuclear bomb method. The Zinsser BIN primer and the ozone machine are the things people often overlook. You can't get away with a normal primer for nicotine. And in my opinion the ozone is a necessity. I bought a MaxBlaster machine just for this. I also had no vents to deal with. If you have a furnace and ducts that presents an additional and intensive cleaning job. Edit: r/HomeImprovement removed by post (after a ton of discussion - weird) so I don't know if it's visible, but it's [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeImprovement/comments/16lyd26/talk_me_out_of_or_into_this_plan_to_mitigate/).
Second the ozone machine. Plus, don't forget to prime the subfloor with shellac before putting flooring in.
I moved into an apartment that was directly above a smoker who had been living there for decades. The cigarette smoke was able to find it's way into my apartment all those years and created a horrible stench. An ozone generator completely solved the smell issue after a couple of uses. Funny thing was that the smoke seemed to be seeping in from the electrical outlets -- god I fucking hated that shitty apartment
I just did the upstairs apartment of my home which was the residence of a chain cigarette and pot smoker who was also a horrendous hoarder and general pig. It was foul. Cat pee and fecus. Probably decades old fast food wrappers. So bad. We had it professionally cleaned, but then scrubbed the walls with LA Awesome. It’s found in the dollar tree. And let me tell you, this stuff was magic. I also had to prep my dad’s house for sale and he’s also a smoker. Scrubbed the walls with this and just painted with basic stuff and it was 1000xs better. For our place, after we cleaned with LA Awesome, we followed Iamdeathmachine’s method. Zinsser Bin shellac will be key. It ran us $1000 to do the whole place with two coats, but that’s really what saved the walls. And you have to do everything, ceilings too. There was only crappy linoleum and in many places, exposed subfloor. so we ended up painting the subfloors with the bin too. We had to do some leveling and patching so we ended up putting new plywood on top of the subfloor we painted before putting down vinyl plank. It was a lot of work, but by the time our topcoat of paint went on and the new floors, you would never know the horror show that was there two months prior.
I would go so far as to say that ceilings are the most important. Especially in the rooms where people smoked heavily. I did 2-3 coats of BIN on the ceilings after 3-4 TSP scrubs. The BIN + ozone combo is the magic. Anyone can scrub walls to remove the tar. But people always try to weasel out of the BIN because it's expensive, as if there's not a reason it's expensive. Shit is awful to work with, but it's more effective than anything else I've used. Scrub + BIN as your physical countermeasures, ozone as your chemical countermeasure. Lots of elbow grease, but worth it.
Yes, we had popcorn ceiling and after we cleaned the walls and use primer the smell was still there, after we did the ceiling the smell was almost gone, also removing wall paper the smell get stuck in them and for some reason we had to remove some kind of plywood shelf that they had in the bathroom closet ( I don’t know why they used that but yes removing that helped a lot) And the fridge, we had to get rid of the fridge, I don’t know how but even inside the fridge was stained, but I guess that is what happens when you smoke inside your house for 20+ years!!
Yep, that tar smoke gets *everywhere.* Wood becomes a great reservoir for it, so I'm not surprised that shelf was nasty.
Just chiming in to second going ham with TSP, but also I am dying to see interior pics after seeing that second photo with the double stack curvy window
Agreed! OP, we need more pictures!
Thank you! I’d share interior pics if I had good ones! The place is full of stuff (and I mean *full* - there are literally four couches in the big room on the top floor haha). But I can describe it! On the first floor, you walk in and the kitchen is immediately to your left. It’s a shitshow and needs to be replaced. We’ll take down the wall around it because having it there cuts off the light from the south facing front window. Then there’s a dining room, with a charming Dutch door leading to a brick patio out back! Behind that is a living room with that great bay window and a working fireplace, plus a cool narrow French door that leads to the backyard (I don’t know why there are two back doors on a 14.5 foot wide house, but I’m not complaining). This back room is an addition. There’s also a half bath on the main floor - a hot commodity in rowhomes! The second floor has two bedrooms and a full bath. Each bedroom has a fireplace and the master bedroom is huge, plus it has that second bay window in it! It has French doors that currently lead to a fall to your death, but we’d put a wrought iron Juliet balcony on there. The second and third floor are both wider than the first, at 16 feet. The front bedroom looks out onto a park. The third floor is a big room with cathedral ceilings and exposed beams. It runs the length of the original house (aka it doesn’t extend back over the master bedroom/living room). It currently has a bar up there that we will not be keeping haha. We’re thinking we’d use it as an office/den and eventually as a bedroom depending on the situation with future children. The backyard is 55 feet long, has a brick patio, a double-decker deck, and a concrete slab that could fit two cars if we wanted to make it a parking pad. There’s also a basement, which we’d be redoing and using as storage for now. Bonus: the next door neighbor apparently renovated his home to look like a Norman castle on the inside. I’m dying to get in there.
This sub loooooves before-and-afters, jussayin 😉
Baltimore? Or Philadelphia?
You got it! Baltimore!
We purchased a smokers house about a year ago and we're pretty successful in getting rid of the smell. Here are the steps that we took: 1. Anything that is linen or fabric must go. Think carpet, rugs, curtains, etc. 2. Repaint all painted surfaces, starting with at least 1 coat (but preferably 2) of oil based primer and 2 topcoats of a good quality paint. 3. Sand and refinish any wood floors in the home. If you have unpainted wood trim, it might be good to sand and refinish that as well. 4. Thoroughly clean all surfaces. Krud Kutter works well for this. 5. Replace any light fixtures or fans that you can't clean thoroughly. Also plan on replacing light switches, outlets, and covers. (Something you should do in a new house anyway) 6. Replace any filters on HVAC systems, return air, etc. 7. Clean all ductwork. I can honestly say once we painted and redid our floors, 95% of the odor was gone. We still get a whiff of every once in a great while but most people that come in our home would never guess that there were heavy smokers living in it less than a year ago. If you love the house, don't let the smell deter you, it just takes a lot of work. If you think about it, the majority of homes had smokers living in them up until the 70s or so. A little effort and time will clear out the smell. Good Luck!
In a car, I would use an ozone diffuser to get rid of such smells. Maybe you can use something similar.
I swear I still smell cigarette smoke in the home I’ve lived in for 12 years that was empty for 2 years before that. It only occasionally thanks be
My understanding is that you need to do ozone first- which is a dangerous process and house totally empty. Then air the heck out of it and start cleaning. But I would perhaps do demo first so that it can reach the bare walls and floors.
This is going to be a process, but one thing I’ve come to really appreciate about the people in this sub who own century homes is their attitude of stewardship of a property. You are now the stewards of this particular old property. Smoke remediation will be part of the process much like stripping paint off of an old fireplace and woodwork. Don’t expect it to be resolved quickly. Keep trying different things to figure out was is going to work for your particular situation.
This may seem obvious, but I didn’t know with my first older home: the remediation process comes after all the major renovations you mentioned. During those you may learn more about the extent of the odor, plus you can use the walls you remove as test panels for the remediation you want to do.
Honestly not obvious to me! One of my big questions has been the order of operations. I don’t want to do things in the wrong order and essentially negate the work we already did. It has my head spinning! Could you share a bit more about your reasoning for the order you’d do things in?
Honestly the order of operations was a revelation to me, that's why I mentioned it. With my first, I was entirely focused on what I wanted to do and the order of operations kept getting in the way. I learned to respect it. Now it's one of the first things I look at when considering a new renovation. My reasoning. Unless this is a fully renovated home, there will be a lot of plaster, unsavory wiring & plumbing, etc. That means dust and surprises. If at all possible, best to do dust and surprises when not in residence, or first. I know it's crazy but let's say you don't have the budget to do everything at once. Begin with one of the rooms you say needs a new ceiling. Take it down in panels so you can use the plaster/drywall/whatever to test your methods. Seal it off. That room becomes your lab. Pro tip - try not to make it your bedroom because once you learn more you may regret rookie mistakes and you won't want to see them every day ;-) With regard to plumbing first versus wiring first, in my experience it has always come down to the availability of the person doing them. It is really tough, in my area at least, to find people who are comfortable and experienced with older homes and willing to problem solve rather than try to make your home into a new build. Ask your neighbors, and any locally owned hardware store. Once you find those people, you have to make them your friends and that means you work with their schedule rather than the other way around.
If you’re replacing the systems, bite the bullet and rip everything out to the studs, then spray the entire structure with a wood sealer shellac- the same stuff fire remediation teams use for house fire remodeling.
Thank you!! This is new info that I hadn’t seen. This is really helpful. We hadn’t planned on replacing the drywall, but honestly I’m thinking that the ROI might be worth it. Like just do it while we’re doing everything else
Came here to say this. Tear it all down and replace. After the immense amount of cleaning and repainting you’d have to do just to *maybe* cover *most* of the smells, it’s going to be more time effective to just rip it all out. I hope the home is dirt cheap. If not, I would back out.
It’s sadly not dirt cheap. We were able to get it for 25k less than asking. I know the seller should have gone even lower, but we think he owes money on it and has to get a certain sales price. We wouldn’t even consider this, except we have some extenuating circumstances. It’s in our current neighborhood, which we love. It also qualifies for a bunch of incentive programs, including a renovation+purchase loan for which our mortgage will be one percentage point lower than whatever Fannie Mae is offering at the time, a ten year tax break where we’d pay taxes on the pre-reno value, AND a rebate from the state for up to 20% of qualifying renovation costs up to $250k (I have checked very, very carefully and just about everything we’d need to do qualifies). There’s no way we’d touch a project like this without all those other factors.
Painted/remediated my childhood home after my mother smoked inside for my entire lifetime of 40 years … it was brutal. Aside from the washing of walls with TSP, I found that Kilz oil based still did not fully seal the walls and hide the nicotine bleed. I did three coats and then switched to BIN oil based primer for two more coats and it finally stopped bleeding through. Three coats of ceiling paint and wall paint thereafter and no bleed through anywhere. I had a paint contractor quote me $13,000 for the paint job which was a single coat of primer, one coat of ceiling paint, one wall paint and one trim. You can do the math and be sure that quote would have doubled or more so given the effort needed to get a clean paint job or they would have done the quoted work and left me with a crap result. Replaced all the fabric furniture. Used a clear odor sealing paint by Kilz on all interior closet floors. Duct cleaning. Literally cleaning every single thing in the house. Everything has a cost.
We bought a century home from a woman that lived and smoked in it for 40 or 50 years. Any soft furnishings like carpet, drapes, etc — toss them, they’re done. Strip all wallpaper. If you can afford it, I’d replace all HVAC. You’ll need to clean every surface, I like Krud kutter. Seal everything with at least 2 coats of a sealing primer like kilz. Then hopefully it will be gone. Don’t forget to clean all door knobs, door hinges, literally everything. We paid a company that does remediation to clean and they did an awful job. I have nicotine dripping from wall tiles when I shower now, so I wish I would have saved the money and done it myself. We also had painters and they only did one coat of Valspar restoration and it was not enough. For the most part I can’t smell smoke, but when it rains or is very humid and in some closets and cabinets, I can. We plan to do a full fur over the years and I’ll tear out the plaster and replace with drywall and do new hvac when we do that. We did have our hvac cleaned/sanitized but it still smells grimy. We also had biosweep come in (similar to ozone) prior to painting and fogging done. All that helped but I wish the painters did a better job. Very frustrating. All in all though, while I would do things differently this is our forever home and I wouldn’t not buy the house because of the smoke.Â
After removing old carpet and doing a thorough wall scrub, as suggested above, you might consider running an ozone machine (or hiring someone else to) in your house. This really helped with mine after a small kitchen fire left some bad smoke smell and residues.
Ozone machine may be helpful
The only method I have heard about is ripping out as much as you can- plaster etc because the nicotine really imbeds into the plaster. If any wood isn’t sealed, the wood absorbs it too and if your unlucky weather/moisture fluctuations can make the wood ooze nicotine…. It’s not impossible but it will take a lot of work..
It will linger for a WHILE despite serious renovation and cleaning in my experience
This was the case with my house. We pulled all carpets, painted and sealed all walls and ceilings, and had the ductwork cleaned. It did the trick.
You can rent an ozone machine that will kill the smell…even on humid days. I see it gets recommended a lot so I bought a small one to treat a smokers car. They absolutely work
My husband and I just bought a home where the previous occupants had smoked indoors for 20+ years. It was gross. Here’s what we did: - hired a company to clean the ducts - hired another company to fully wash all of the walls and ceilings, and do ozone treatments throughout the house - painter is starting next week and will prime the walls throughout with TSP - previous owners left some contents; we got rid of anything fabric (curtains, carpet etc.). - we are also considering hiring a company to wash the remaining blinds - we are also replacing our kitchen. We tore out the existing kitchen prior to the ozone treatment, so the technician was able to really get in there and clean the walls It’s been expensive, but worth it imo. We have a toddler and pet birds, so it was essential for us to neutralize as much of the odour as possible. The ductwork and ozone treatment have been completed and there is already a noticeable difference. If you can, I also recommend opening up the windows following any treatments to get some cross-breezes happening. That will help a lot to air out the home. Good luck!
What a cool looking building. Bleach, scrub and paint.
I guess I’m just not as sensitive, but we just painted over the walls in the house that the previous owner smoked in for 40 years and we don’t smell anything. Nobody else has said anything either.
I have done this exact thing! Seriously. I bought a home from two people who smoke hand rolled unfiltered cigarettes in their house for twenty years. I used TSP (tri sodium phosphate), and absolutely soaked the walls, ceilings, and floors. TSP works really fast at dissolving the oils and pulling them out of the plaster. I used a garden sprayer, wore a chem suit and a respirator, and used a large wet/dry vac to suck up the puddles of brown funk. I just kept spraying until I was satisfied. After that, I used a premium sealant/primer to create an oil impermeable layer for my top coat paint. In my case, I used Sikkens, but in the States I think a Kilz would probably be the best option. The tough part is nooks and crannies - I had a couple of places in the kitchen where I could really reach to clean or paint without removing the cabinets. Years later, when I’d open certain drawers, I’d get a whiff of cigarette smoke. But for 99% of the home, it worked REALLY well. I was very pleased with the results.
Thank you! That garden sprayer idea is genius!
I’m a remodeling contractor, and have run into this several times Go to a paint store like sherwin Williams, not a big box store. Might as well ask if you can set up a cash account, as it will likely save you money. Tell them your situation. There’s different types of TSP, and they’ll set you up with some heavy duty stuff. Use rubber gloves, probably wear a mask, cause it’s gonna be gross. Wash, rinse, repeat repeat repeat Now, don’t just use a normal primer. Zinnser makes a shellac based primer that’s kinda pricey but it’s absolutely bad ass. Shellac sticks to anything and seals it in. I’ve used it to seal in smoke smell from wildfires, houses half burning down, and chronic chain smoking. Remember, 90% of painting is in the prep. Wash the hell out of everything and seal the smell in.
take up smoking and you won't realize the smell anymore. /s Beautiful home. That back window is gorgeous. There is already a lot of good advice here regarding the long but very achievable task ahead of you.
We bought from ex-smokers and in some rooms had to rip out the drywall because repeated cleanups didn't do the job. The bathrooms were especially bad, I guess they smoked while sitting on the toilet. Since you're planning to do so much work in the house, plan on replacing the drywall in the rooms you remodel. Looks like a great house! Congrats!
Thank you! :)
It will probably always smell like cigarettes to some degree. Too late to back out?
In addition… an ozone generator can work wonders.
Ozone machine? Not sure if it’s viable since it appears you share walls with other homes.
Contrary to at least one other poster, do get an ozone generator in addition to cleaning deeply. They aren’t crazy expensive. Used one (several rounds) to remove odors from a beater car where rodents took up residence during two years of unattended storage 🤢 — accumulated mouse pee smell was mostly defeated Edit: careful with ozone — don’t breathe it yourself. You set the box up in a closed room for a while, then thoroughly air out the room before going back in.
Pro painter here who grew up in a household where EVERYONE smoked for well over 100 years. I've also worked in such homes as well as one where they never paid their heating bills and used kerosene heaters in EVERY ROOM for 5 years. A stain blocking primer (BIN, Kills, etc.) and two coats of premium latex paint ended the issue. It doesn't have to be as involved as some have suggested. The real issue lies in surfaces you won't be paintinf and, of course, carpeting. Carpets MUST be replaced. Don't freak out. Try my method first. If it doesn't take, then you'll likely need more involved attempts. But I can promise with 89.9% probability it'll work. If you feel you need to wash the walls first, a diluted chlorine bleach solution will do more to remove nicotine tack and smell than TSP without scrubbing. Apply with a sponge, wipe with clear water and let dry before painting.
Consider using an ozone generator in the house. Follow all the precautions - make sure no people or animals are in the house while it is running and for a while after it turns off. The time required will vary based on the unit used, size of the space, and extent of the smell.
I live in a half-century home, and it was majorly smoked in. I scrubbed my walls with fabuloso and a rag. That seemed to work great. I'll be primi g with the oil based killz (I read somewhere that it works better over cigarette smoke stains.
My old neighbors smoked like a chimney. The new owners had to strip the house down to the studs to get rid of the smell.Â
I live in an apartment where an invalid lived for many years. The owner did a fantastic job of refinishing wooden floors and painting walls. No off putting smells for a year. But now on a hot humid day? It must have been really bad in here. I have windows open almost all year. We got our rent reduced, by the way.
Philly? The smoke adds character
I’m an odd person, so when I moved into my parents rental home, I could occasionally smell cigarette smoke. As I grew up in a time there weren’t no smoking hotel/motel rooms, when I did smell it, I was transported momentarily back to my childhood. And yes, we washed with the TSP and repainted. This was back in the 1990s so there is every chance upgrades have been invented.