musty smell - located!
I posted last week about a musty old house smell in the dining room. I finally figured it out, now I need creative solutions. We have an original wide plank pine floor that has some gaps and the smell is coming up from the gaps – that “in between the walls” smell. I can not…
I posted last week about a musty old house smell in the dining room. I finally figured it out, now I need creative solutions. We have an original wide plank pine floor that has some gaps and the smell is coming up from the gaps – that “in between the walls” smell. I can not afford to redo the floors anytime soon, but I am considering either painting on some Safecoat in the gaps (clear) or filling with wood filler and staining to match, roughly. These are OLD floors so I think some variation in stain will go completely unnoticed – part of the charm, right? Any other good ideas, something I can do myself for little money?
Sudden thought: The smell could be mouse urine. After a huge infestation in one apartment, I recognize the smell when I step into some bodgas. The fix for that is one part bleach to two parts dish soap and water (or is it the other way round?). Of course, I realize this information may not be too helpful if the urine is under the floor boards in the crawl space.
I looked up some stuff on sites real quick about removing odors from wood and here are some other ideas:
This piece about removing odors from old pianos’ wood says there’s an ozone device that works:
http://www.player-care.com/odors.html
They also say what I suggested, which is sprinkle baking soda all over.
This site says this:
“Odor Removal from Drawer or Cabinet
To remove odors from a drawer or cabinet, you can either fill the drawer with ground coffee and leave it overnight, use baking soda and leaving it in for several days, use cat litter and leave it in for several days or place the drawer outside in a shady spot on a breezy day. If the odor persists, you can carefully place a bowl of bleach in the empty drawer or cabinet, close the drawer or cabinet and let it sit for a few days, then carefully remove the bowl of bleach.”
http://cleaning.lifetips.com/cat/41/furniture-cleaning/
This has several suggestions for removing odors from old wood:
http://woodworking.about.com/od/dealingwithproblems/qt/RemovingOdors.htm
Baking soda absorbs odors. What about trying what’s done with carpet and upholstery and refrigerators — sprinkle baking soda all over the floor and make sure to get it into the cracks. Let it stay there undisturbed for 2-3 days then shop vac the heck out of it as Park Place suggests. Then repeat it regularly like once a month.
I’d be wary of using putty and things on the floor you may end up hating the look of and it could be difficult to remove.
We had the same issue- both with the smell and the gaps.
We found that shop vacc’ing the heck out of the gaps helped, as did letting the whole thing air out for a while after we uncovered and discovered the plank floor under layers and layers of carpet and linoleum.
You can put some spay foam into the gaps that are exposed to plug up the draft that run out the hole and brings the smell in.
You can stuff steel wool down gaps to provide a based for the caulk or wood putty. It will eventually crack, but then it won’t fall down the gap.
We have large gaps in our flooring and the previous owners plugged them with putty. It looks awful and pieces are always breaking off. You want to make it air tight, so maybe some type of caulk could work if you kept the bead below the surface of the floor.
I don’t think any filler will last for long as your floor boards expand in Summer and shrink in winter. I stuffed oakum in the cracks of my kitchen floor and covered it with wood putty. That lasted a couple of years, but is now long gone. Perhaps something more flexible, like silicon caulking would work, but I don’t think it would look very good.