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Posted by: Sara on January 06, 2000 at 18:35:10:
In Reply to: Animal urine in old wood floor Posted by: Cary Westerbeck on January 03, 2000 at 19:46:13:
: I've got a new question for you. My wife and I bought a small, beat, 1950s rambler. The house had been a badly cared for rental. The house has wood floors throughout most rooms, but they were covered with nasty, urine stained berber carpets that we ripped out promptly upon taking possession. The urine had soaked into the wood floors and crystalized in the wood. We sealed the floors with KILZ (Bin primer?)to banish the smell and it worked beautifully. We then carpeted over them, thinking this was our only option. The smell is gone and the carpet is nice, but I long for the wood floor.
: Now, I'm curious whether we should have tried to sand the urine soaked floors and then sealed them so that we could enjoy wood floors rather than carpet. Is there hope for a wood floor in this kind of shape? Has anyone ever encountered this problem before? it seems to me that a good sanding and sealing would do the job, working like the KILZ did to seal the smell below. I don't mind some stains as long as the floor doesn't reek.
: Anyone have any advice or info?
: Thanks,
: Cary in Seattle
Cary--
I had the same problem when my landlord kicked out his tenants and we proceeded to clean out the poor wrecked house.
The animals had been left inside while the people were at work and had urinated all over the hardwood floors. Yep--it reeked BAD!!
The animals had also been considerate enough to only pee in about 5 places continually--enough so that the floor boards were warped and
the old varnish was gone--exposing the bare wood.
What worked for us was to make up a very weak sudsy ammonia solution in water and sponge it on the soiled area, let it set for a few
minutes, and wipe away after a few minutes so that it didn't soak into the wood very much. We repeated this about 10 times a day for about
two weeks(we were working on other areas of the house so this wasn't a problem). After this time there was no odor.
We sanded and refinished the floor and there is no pet odor and no discoloration of the wood floor. The sander flattened the warped areas.
There are a few slightly wide cracks but we felt that they added character to the floor.(The house itself is almost 120 years old--it SHOULD have sme character :) If this is your case and you don't want them you can always
fill them in.
Good luck.
Sara
