Smoke Damage Repair

Getting rid of smoke

When people think of smoke damage, they are often thinking about smoke from fire that infiltrates the walls, carpets, furniture, and of course the clothing and linens.  

This kind of smoke damage happens all at once and is usually covered by home insurance.  Professional cleaners are hired and they come in to evacuate the odors or call the furniture and carpets a loss and dispose of them.

Other kinds of smoke can be just as damaging to your home.  Cigarette and cigar smoke can build up over time, and owners who don't regularly have their carpets and furniture cleaned, may find that residual smoke or "musty" smells fill the house.  

Most smokers who do attempt to remove the smoke think that they've been terribly successful in doing so.  However, this is not an opinion shared by non-smokers.  A smoker's house that has been thoroughly cleaned, merely smells like a smoker's home plus the smell of pungent chemicals.  When it comes to smoke, the best alternative is to remove the smoke residue, not cover it up.  The latter is generally unsuccessful.

The first thing to do in getting out the smell of the smoke is to remove the smoking from the house.  Keep it out of doors if at all possible, just to allow the house time to breathe and air out.  Time alone can help to rid your house of the smell of smoke.  

Air out the house as much as possible.  A house can take months to exchange every bit of air with the outside.  If possible, open up windows and doors during the daytime, all day long.  

Launder or dry clean rugs, drapes, towels, and check to see if couch pillows can be washed.  These are great sponges for smoke.  In some cases, you will see that water from things that you thought were clean becomes brown from smoke residue.

Paint walls - smoke permeates drywall and there is simply no getting it completely out.  Your alternative therefore, is to paint over it.  This is not to be accomplished with cheap paints or ones that are diluted for the sake of economy.  Latex paints can be extensively diluted.  But the water added to latex paints destroys the link structure of the latex within the paint, and it severely reduces the effectiveness of the paint in eliminating odors.

Have carpet and furniture professionally cleaned.  With all due respect to Rug Doctor and similar products, this is not the time to do it yourself.  You may get some of the smoke smell out, but remember that we are talking about buyers here.  These are the people that need to be impressed with your home.

Go through your coat closet.  Most of these coats can afford to be dry-cleaned anyway.  Because they are so bulky, they often hide smoke and should be cleaned.

Many people also report great results with using ionic air cleaners.  Unlike chlorine bleach, where the smell reacts very badly with smoke, ionic air cleaners neutralize the smoke particle and drop it out, and only leave a light clean smell of ozone in the air.  Consider going through this process however, before you clean the carpets.  Ionic air cleaners will drop materials out of the air and onto your carpet.

Now that you've cleaned as much as you can, consider adding some cedar chips to your closets.  Natural smells like this do not have a tendency to draw so much attention to the smells that they are masking.