found a house but the owners are smokers

sirmosh

It's generally not too bad, with all the soft furnishings out you'll probably find that the majority of the smell has already gone and after a bit of decorating it's often gone. Depends how severe it is though, if they smoked heavily in one room then it'll be harder to get rid of that than if they smokey lightly throughout the house.

I know someone who bought a house that elderly people had smoked constantly in one room and the smell refused to go even after the whole room was striped out but it did eventually fade over time (although that might just be out of familiarity).

bobula

we just bought a smokers house

white wall paper was yellow .... yick

We decided to do it propperly - stripped alll the walls in the bedroom and the living room back to plaster and had them skimmed (where they smoked most by the looks of it )

just repainted today and its smelling clean and fresh !

lifted the carpets and the underneeth is yellow so just binned them all. all curtains and blinds were binned

plan is in the future to strip the wall paper from the hall way and the spare room as we have time but in all honesty once the carpets and curtains were out the smell was lessened - once the wall paper was off in the living room it had all but gone !

as it stands we have 2 weeks to get the current 2 rooms in order before we move in.

saving grace is they didnt smoke in the kitchen and its fine !

coal fires are an entirely different thing - you dont tend to sit down or walk around with a chimney over your head ?

echo the bedroom comments.

i couldnt have moved into the stale smoke

conradmum

Personally I wouldn't buy a house that smelled of smoke at a viewing. To me, that means it must be pretty bad. Our old vendors were smokers but I didn't realise until after we moved in and I was cleaning the yellowed pvc window frames. I'm quite sensitive to the smell of smoke but I hadn't noticed it on two viewings. The problem with it is that you may not be able to get rid of the smell, at least not for a long time. How does your partner feel about it? Does it bother him/her?

missile

I would redecorate, replace the carpets curtains and any other soft furnishings left behind.

Itismehonest

In the great scheme of things an ex-home of smokers is relatively easy to put right. It's not like damp, mould or pet fleas :eek:
As has been said, it's the carpets & soft furnishings that tend to hold the smell.

lollipopsarah

well said, after most new buyers chuck everything out and redecorate anyway.
Be glad that's the only problem - at least you can see it!
xx

fannyanna

Our home was a nicotine hell hole when we bought it. As we stripped the wallpaper the steam made the nicotine in the ceiling drip down onto us - yuck!

We spent a fortune buying special paint to cover everything as after 4 or 5 coats of white paint we realised it wasn't doing the trick.

Since the initial decorating everything has been fine.

So my thoughts are to buy this house that you love but just be prepared to do quite a bit of cleaning/redecorating when you move in.

smileytiger

Both me and my OH were smokers - I quit last year but he still does.

Bearing in mind that our house goes up for sale hopefully next week (just finalising a few details) - in the past 3 months we have;

Washed (thoroughly - as OH used to be a decorator) cleaned and decorated every room back to neutral colours etc
As every room has been done - it has become a smoke free zone & now OH is 'happily' smoking outside only.:D

It never occured to us that we should leave it smoky smelling or nicotine tinted paintwork. It hasn't cost us that much and hopefully has made our house much more attractive to all buyers.

That said i shall still be febreezing all over when it comes to viewings as we still have 2 great big dogs to mask the smell of:rotfl:

zzzLazyDaisy

The people who sold the house to me were heavy smokers. They mostly smoked in the kitchen. The walls were a sort of 'old gold' colour - but after they removedthe various plates. nick-ncks etc from the wall, I discovered the true colour was a pale primrose yellow. They left antique pine furniture in the kitcken which my friend scrubbed down for me, and the decorator had to scrub everything with sugar soap, including the pvc window frames, then apply two coats of white emulsion and two coats of magnolia, before it looked and smelled fresh.

The lounge was another bad place. They had just put cheap while emuslion on the walls and the nicotine staining was coming through, and the place smelled dreadful. But once I'd removed the curtains and carpet and had it properly decorated, it was fine.

To be honest, I didn't mind about the state of the place as I got it cheap - presumably other buyers were put off. I then set too and gutted each room and stamped my own style on it - I would have done that anyway, as their decor wasn't to my taste.

If you like it, go ahead, be prepared for some work/outlay, and look forward to really making the place your own.

amonaghan

Our house didn't smell of smoke at any viewing (including visits to measure windows and so on while the legal stuff was taking place), it didn't smell when we moved in, however about 3 days later whatever they'd used to mask the smell wore off, it took ages to get rid of the smell.

If it is the house you want, go for it but be prepared for a lot of work! At least you have warning of the issue and you can organise the moving day to allow time to vax the carpets.