Cigarette smoke odor in a Nottingham resale home: what to clean first

Where the smell is hiding

Smoke leaves a sticky, yellowish film on almost everything it touches, and that film keeps giving off odor long after the last cigarette. In a house where someone smoked indoors for years, check all of these:

• Walls and ceilings. The biggest surfaces in the house and the ones people forget. Wipe a light-colored wall with a damp white cloth and look at the cloth.
• The HVAC system. The filter, return vents, ductwork and air handler all collect residue, and every time the system runs, it carries that smell from room to room.
• Carpet and pad. The fibers hold residue, and the pad underneath can hold it too.
• Upholstered furniture. Anything that stayed with the house has foam and batting inside that soaks up odor.
• The rest of the soft and porous stuff. Curtains, blinds, closet shelving, the insides of cabinets and light fixtures.

Work from the top down

Order matters more than any product. If the carpet is cleaned first and the walls are washed afterward, dirty drips land on clean carpet, and the HVAC keeps blowing smoky air across it. A sensible sequence:

1. Remove what's leaving anyway: old curtains, blinds and furniture you don't plan to keep.
2. Replace the HVAC filter and have an HVAC company look at the ducts and air handler.
3. Wash the walls, ceilings, trim and doors. Painters usually put an odor-blocking primer on smoke-stained walls before the finish coat, because nicotine stains can bleed through ordinary paint.
4. Clean the hard surfaces: cabinets inside and out, windows and fixtures.
5. Clean the carpet and upholstery last.

Eco-Dry handles step five. Wall washing, duct work and painting belong to other trades, and a house with a heavy smoke history may need an odor remediation company for the early steps.

Why the carpet goes last

There are two reasons. First, washing and painting are messy. Drips, drop cloths and ladder feet all end up on the carpet. Second, while the walls and ducts are still releasing odor, freshly cleaned carpet can pick some of it back up, and you'd be paying to clean it twice.

With the big surfaces done, hot water extraction can flush a good deal of residue out of the carpet fibers. When the walls and ducts are already handled, that last step often makes the difference you can actually smell. How much it helps depends on what's under the carpet.

The pad question

Carpet pad works like a sponge. After years of smoke, it can hold odor that no surface cleaning will reach. If the smell is still strongest close to the floor after cleaning, especially in the room where the smoker spent the most time, the pad may be the source.

In that case, the honest fix is new pad, not another cleaning. And if the carpet itself is old and worn, putting the money toward new carpet and pad may make more sense than cleaning either one. It's better to know that before you book than after.

Furniture that lived with a smoker

Upholstery follows the same logic. Cleaning reaches the fabric and some of what sits just under it, but deep inside a cushion, foam can keep holding odor. For a sofa that came with the house, ask whether it's worth keeping at all. For a piece you care about, upholstery cleaning is a reasonable first step, and an upholsterer can replace cushion foam if the smell stays in the cushions.

Check the tag for a cleaning code before anything else. We test the fabric in a hidden spot before cleaning, because some fabrics can't take a wet cleaning at all.

Test your progress with fresh air

Your nose gets used to a smell after a while in the same room, which makes it hard to judge whether anything is working. So test on purpose. Close the house up, run the heat or air conditioning the way you normally would, and leave for a few hours. Run errands at White Marsh Mall or along Belair Road. When you come back, pay attention during the first minute inside the front door.

Do that after each big step. It tells you whether the walls, the HVAC work or the carpet made the biggest difference, and whether one particular room still needs attention.

Booking the last step

When the walls and ducts are done, book carpet cleaning in Nottingham and add any furniture you're keeping. Tell us which rooms smell worst, what's been done so far and whether anyone has looked at the pad. Carpet is $65 per room up to 200 sq ft and a sofa is $150. The Nottingham visit minimum is $225, and the online booking shows the full total before you confirm.

Rich Tobin, who owns Eco-Dry, is IICRC certified. He or one of our technicians will tell you plainly if a room needs new pad rather than another cleaning.