CAT URINE HOUSE- ADVICE?

Question

Hey guys,

Getting ready to close on what appears to be a pretty sweet deal. I have it under contract with the owner for $23,500 with a ARV of $120,000. House needs about 35k in work. However, the cat urine is BAD in this house. The previous owner moved out and let his 3 cats live there for nearly a year with no litter boxes. You can imagine how horrible the cat urine smell is.

Any suggestions? We plan on tearing out all of the paneling and potentially the sub-floor to lay down new, and we had a Sherwin Williams rep suggest some kind of urine-smell killing agent to spray the ENTIRE inside of the house with, but how do you typically handle a cat pee house, investors?

Thank you!

Nicole A. · Answer

JD gives great advice on this. One of my properties smelled pretty bad, but I'm guessing not as bad as you. There wasn't wood flooring to sand....just old nasty carpet. We removed it and returned a day later to find it still very smelly. We then bleached the subfloor and that seemed to rid of the smell.

Jack Knochel · Answer

Oh wow, good luck with that one.  We had one where it was hoarders and they had dogs and cats using the upstairs bedrooms as bathrooms as well as the upstairs bathroom as the lock up for some pets that tore the walls and all up.  We bought urine destroyer at the pet store and it was a lifesaver.  We had to replace subfloors and also kilz the walls and below the subfloor when it was open.  We also had to replace all electrical outlets and boxes and spray behind them and then seal those with foam as well as seal every seem in the floors.  Use the best kilz oil based paint and don't scrimp on riping out walls or flooring or oil based kilz.  Had to get a special cleaning for the duct work and also ran an ozone generator a ton.  Days before closing we could smell it seeping through cracks and walls and used more kilz and spray and sealer.  It was nuts, but come closing day, clean as a whistle.

JD Martin · Answer

We did one two years ago that was horrendous. It turned out all of the smell was in the top layer of the wood flooring. Once we had a full sand and poly done the odor was gone. I have known houses where they had to take out the entire subfloor and the bottom half of the drywall. You really don't know until you get into it, but if it has salvageable wood floors I would start there. You'll know after a good full sand if it will come out or is able to be sealed.

Joshua D. · Answer

@Joshua Dorkin

CAT URINE HOUSE- ADVICE?

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