Workbench Creations

When we recently purchased our first home, my husband and I knew the previous owner was a smoker and pet owner. We planned on repainting everything and tearing out the old carpeting. I did a little research online to find out the best ways of getting rid of nicotine stains and smoke and pet odor, which led me to "Krud Kutter" cleaning solution and "Kilz" oil-based primer.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself... upon our final house walkthrough before the closing, we found out that the previous occupants left us a lovely housewarming gift-- an infestation of fleas! We decided on flea bombing the main floor of the house (it's a ranch-style home), tearing up the old carpets as fast as possible, and then hired professionals to spray the whole house. While we saw a few fleas in the following couple weeks, after 3 weeks they were completely gone and we haven't seen any since. Fortunately, we weren't in any hurry to move in right away, as there was a ton more work that needed to be done.

Fast forward through 3 weeks of scrubbing walls, ceilings and floors – and while I highly recommend Krud Kutter and Kilz, I also highly recommend not buying a smoker's house! The cleaner worked quite well, but having to refresh your clean water bucket every 3 foot section of wall or ceiling is not anyone's idea of fun. And just think, the gunk we cleaned off the walls was what ends up in your lungs if you smoke!

After a while, the smoky smell was replaced by pet odor. Turns out the previous occupant wasn't very good at house-training their dog, as there were quite a few stains on the carpets that went right through to the plywood subflooring. After initially cleaning with Ajax, figuring the bleach would help, we ended up scrubbing the heavily-stained areas several times with the Krud Kutter solution.

Unfortunately, one section of the floor just seemed beyond hope; but, after we started using the Kilz primer on other parts of the house, the pet odor smell was replaced by oil-based primer smell, so it's hard to tell if the pet odor will come back to haunt us on some humid day in the future. Goodness knows it would be too late if we put flooring over it, so we're still contemplating replacing 2 pieces of plywood so we don't have to worry about it.

With the initial cleaning completed, we moved on to the kitchen.

Other blogs in this series:

Home Renovation for Newbies, Part 1: Don't Panic

Home Renovation for Newbies, Part 2: Prep Work

Home Renovation for Newbies, Part 3: Demolition Time

Home Renovation for Newbies, Part 4: Starting to Rebuild

Home Renovation for Newbies, Part 5: Bathroom Remodel

Home Renovation for Newbies, Part 6: Basic Maintenance and Repair