How does a home owner rid a house of cat urine smell? I might buy a cat pee house cheap.?

Question

It has carpet, wallpaper, painted walls and wood floors. The wood floors appear stainless.

Is this a lost cause?

Answer 1

I lived in an apartment that some crazy cat lady had lived in before me. All the carpet had been replaced, the walls had been painted and some of the sub floor had been replaced.

It smelled awful. The smell got into my clothes and my friends said I smelled like my apartment. I took a black light home from work and checked out the walls. You could see the stuff glowing through the paint.

If you still want to get the place....Check it out with a black light before you buy to see how bad it is. Replace any drywall that shows signs of urine. Remove all the carpets (if any). Check the sub floor. Replace sections as necessary. Clean all hard surfaces such as cabinets and counter tops with an enzymatic cleaner.

Pay someone to do a complete cleaning of the ventilation system. You want to get rid of all that dander that is floating around in your ducts.


Make sure the place is clean and stink free BEFORE you move anything in. Otherwise everything you own will absorb that smell. I had to wash all my clothes and bedding. I febreezed everything else (furniture, mattress, etc.). I moved out of the place in May. That winter I went to put on some sweatshirts that I hadn't cleaned....They still smelled horrible 5 months later.

As for the wood floors you can probably clean them off if the polyurethane is in good condition. Otherwise you can re-finish them and they will be fine. My current house (I bought my own after living in 'Cat piss manor') had some pet stained wood floors. The guy I hired to re-finish them said they could smell the urine when they were sanding them. But when they put the poly on you couldn't smell a thing. I've been living there for over 5 years now with no problems.

If you can get the house for $20-30k under market value it may be worth the effort and expense.

Answer 2

Rip all the carpet out. The wallpaper should be torn down. Any painted surface prime it with B-I-N (a shellac based primer that is excellent for blocking odors and can be used on floors). Then repaint everything. Also air out the house for a few days. It's not a lost cause, especially if the wood floors are in good shape. If there are some soft spots on the wood floor for soaking up the urine, give them time to dry out (especially if they've been under carpet). If they don't dry out, sand the spots down, use a wood hardner if needed, then refinish.

We bought and remodeled a house where the previous owner felt it was too much trouble to let the dogs outside, THEN the urine soaked house sat empty for year and a half. It can be done, it just takes a little work and the right products.

Answer 3

rip everything out - carpets, wallpaper and any soiled sheetrock
use a spray bottle with an ammonia/water mixture (1/2 and 1/2) and spray floors and bottoms of walls/mouldings
make sure to open any windows for ventilation - ammonia is powerful - let it dry completely - may want to do a couple runs through just to make sure - if you have a good sniffer - after it is all done and if there are spots that still have even the slightest smell of cat - use baking soda, just sprinkle it around the area(s) and let it sit overnight
repaint walls (use a primer like Kilz first)
make sure to check any moudlings also - those might need replacing if there are any
if you choose to, replace the carpeting, be sure to use a good padding underneath, will help to trap any possible smells after everything has been cleaned

been there, done that - if that property is worth it and you have some spare time to clean - go for it

good luck

Answer 4

Not at all---Pull out all the carpet and go through the house with a blacklight---that will show where the urine stains are---they glow under blacklight. You can seal odors into wood floors with paint products from Zinser which are like shellac---home centers carry it. Any stains on drywall should probably have the drywall cut out and replaced. There are companies that do this service also for fire damage and such---check the phone book. Make sure to air out the house for several days when done.

Answer 5

The ONLY way to get rid of that smell is to start over. Remove the carpet, & wallpaper. Re-paint everything. That smell just sticks to everything. After you remove all the stuff clean the house really well, they make a deododarizer that you can clean with thats just for cat urine. But you will never get rid of the smell unless you gert rid of all the carpet and wall paper. It's just absorbed into it! Yuck. Good luck to you.

Answer 6

B before spending too much money, try one of the oxygen cleaners on the carpet and walls. Bleach on hard surfaces. Murphy's Oil on wood. Baseboards may be dirty on back side. Wood floors keep odors in spaces between boards.

Answer 7

There's a great product available at retailers like Wal-Mart, Kmart, etc., called Odo-Ban. It works wonders and is really inexpensive and easy to use. Just use it where you smell the urine and you've saved yourself all that labor and money of installing new carpet, etc. It worked on my dad's old carpet that he let the cats "do their business" on that was so nasty you didn't want to be near it. If you didn't know about its past, you wouldn't know. Odo-Ban rocks!

Someone mentioned using an ammonia mixture. That's not going to help because that cat pee smell is due to ammonia!

Answer 8

try an industrial o-zone. If that doesn't work you may have to seal all the floors and part of the walls.

Answer 9

Get all new carpet.

Answer 10

burn down the house and shoot the cat