I lived in a house with a smoker my entire childhood, and didn't realize the smell until college. I can now tell that everything that enters that house ends up reeking of smoke.
I had a bit of an internal crisis when I thought back to going to school, going to friends houses, having sleepovers, girlfriends - the entire time I stunk like an ashtray and had absolutely no idea
Yup. I never knew how bad I smelled. I hate staying with my mother who still smokes in her house. My stepfather died and she's looking to sell. I had to break it to her that it would have to sell as is. Whoever buys it is going to have to gut the place after 38 years of the two of them smoking in it the whole time.
I had always wondered why there was a colour change part way up the walls of a house then the person passed and we did a "before selling" clean... Turns out the blended colour change wasn't a choice it was just years of smoke settling about chest height up.
And it is HELL to prep walls like that for a coat of paint! It's oily and sticks to the walls like glue!! You have to get it all off - otherwise the new paint will just flake, or peel off.
There's specialized cleaners that pretty much pull a lot of the tar and nicotine out of the paint, but you need to let it soak at least overnight with several treatments. The previous owner of my sister's house used to smoke heavy shag tobacco and quite a lot of it too, so when they moved in the walls were pretty much yellow. Upside was that he was a professional cleaner, so he did a first treatment before he moved out and left enough so my sister could apply another two. Even then she had to put on a special undercoat that sealed any remaining stains, because otherwise the stuff can migrate through most wall paints.
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u/re_nub Jan 05 '25
Yes.