Cat Urine on Hardwood Flooring
Jeff & Susan Stringer
my childhood home. It's a 3 bedroom rancher built in the late 30's,
early 40's. It has Hardwood floors throughout the living room, dining
room, hall & 3 bedrooms. It has been used as rental property for the
last 20-25 years with wall to wall carpeting. The last tenants had at
20-30 cats inside the house for at least 5 years. The smell was
unbearable. All the hardwood floors are now black with old urine
stains.
We have removed the carpeting and scrubbed the floors with Pine Sol to
disinfect and remove the foam carpet backing, which was "welded" to the
floor, this was beyond "stuck". Then we soaked the floors with "Natures
Wonder" or "Simple Solution" from the pet store, as suggested to
neutralize the smell. We bought all the store had of one and had to buy
the other, we are sort of testing to see which is better, the living
room or the dining room.
The floors were once blonde (oak) but are now dark mahogany splotched.
The man at the hardware store suggested plain Clorox bleach and bright
lights to lighten the stains. Is this the next "correct" step in the
process? Is their any other product available that is designed to
lighten wood stains of this nature? We can't just "Sand out the stains"
as we may end up in the basement!
Any help or pointers would be greatly appreciated. Please respond to my
Email as well, I may never find it again in here ;-)
Sincerely yours,
Susan F. Stringer
Idwim
Bleach in a kit. It comes with the bleach and a nuetralizer. I suspect
that the neutralizer was the only difference between the kit and just using
bleach.
Your stains might be so deep that you can't bleach them out. You might try
sanding them down first to remove the sealer; this should allow better
penetration into the wood and increase the possiblity of cleaning. It might
also help to really saturate the wood to get down into the fibers. Find a
really bad place, hopefully in a closet or a corner and just experiment.
See what you can do.
Options might be to try to stain the floor a really dark color, but that
might not work either as you may still have dark spots. You might consider
having an engineered hardwood installed over it.
.
are now, and then stencil a design on them with a really dark stain in the
areas that a the worst. (My guess, being a cat owner myself, is that the
corners are the worst.) Maybe something that would look like a parquet floor
might work. If worse comes to worse, maybe paint the floor, then sand off
some of the paint to give them an antiquey, weathered look.
Abi
Jeff & Susan Stringer wrote in message
<5F9FCCE8E864B919.05AA62A8...@library-proxy.airnews.ne
t>...
Dick Lucas
litter on the middle of a oak parquet floor and left it for a day. Big
black spot. The ammonia from the urine will darken the oak. Using
ammonia for darkening oak is a well known furniture finishing method. I
tried chlorine bleach to no avail, and ultimately ended up with a
hydrogen peroxide based product from Home Depot. It lightened up the
wood, but made it more gray than the surrounding areas. My wife says
it's acceptable, but I think that eventually I'll replace that area.
Since it's a parquet floor and I have extra wood tiles, it isn't an
unsurmountable task.
Since you have so much stained area, you shouldn't have the matching
problem. You should completely sand the floor to remove any waxes or
varnishes and then do the wood bleach thing. I got a lot of good advice
by posting my messages to rec.woodworking
Dick Lucas
NOSPAMBOB
Dick you beat me to the suggestion. Was one of the suggestions oxalic acid?
In article <36B73C...@HP-PaloAlto-om7.om.hp.com>, Dick Lucas
<DICK_...@HP-PaloAlto-om7.om.hp.com> writes:
>I got a lot of good advice by posting my messages to rec.woodworking
rbowles96ATaolDOTcom for real E-mail
lhar...@nunic.nu.edu
"." <gag...@city-net.com> wrote:
>
> >We have removed the carpeting and scrubbed the floors with Pine Sol to
> >disinfect and remove the foam carpet backing, which was "welded" to the
> >floor, this was beyond "stuck".
Now you know where polyurethane came from.
Then we soaked the floors with "Natures
> >Wonder" or "Simple Solution" from the pet store, as suggested to
> >neutralize the smell. We bought all the store had of one and had to buy
> >the other, we are sort of testing to see which is better, the living
> >room or the dining room.
I speak from experience. The only problem with the enzyme based products is
that they *cannot* remove a lot of the crystallized urine that's buried deep
within the floor. When the weather gets humid, the odor comes back. The one
thing that you *must* do is encapsulate the odor. The only way to do this is
to paint the floor with a shellac-based primer, like BIN. This is what I
used, but good old shellac would probably work as well since it is my
understanding that the encapsulating ingredient is the shellac. If you got a
dark shellac (forgive me I only know about blonde and orange shellac) I'd
imagine it may blend in the stains.
> >The floors were once blonde (oak) but are now dark mahogany splotched.
> >The man at the hardware store suggested plain Clorox bleach and bright
> >lights to lighten the stains.
It *may* lighten the stains, but it might weaken the wood fibers. Check out
rec.woodworking for other products specifically made for wood. I get a couple
of woodworking catalogs & they have bleaches in them specifically made for
wood. However, I don't know how satisfactory this will be. I think you'd be
better off putting on an oil-based red oak stain or darker mission oak. This
would blend in the damaged areas and could be sealed with the shellac.
I had to do this before moving out of my old house when I bought a new one. I
am putting down ceramic tile at my new house & Mr. Pee is confined to his own
bedroom that I tiled first (yes, people think I'm nuts) & I used epoxy mortar
and epoxy grout so it's impervious to his little problem. I also got him on
Buspar to help his anxiety or whatever drove him to this obnoxious behavior.
Anyway hope this helps a little.
Leanne
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NOSPAMBOB
Jeff Jewitt, Homestead Finishing, has a wide variety of shellacs.
In article <798e1u$d85$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, lhar...@nunic.nu.edu writes:
> If you got a
>dark shellac (forgive me I only know about blonde and orange shellac) I'd
>imagine it may blend in the stains.
rbowles96ATaolDOTcom for real E-mail
Michael D. Bakakos
NOSPAMBOB wrote in message <19990202191747...@ngol03.aol.com>...
lhar...@nunic.nu.edu
"Michael D. Bakakos" <mbak...@interaccess.com> wrote:
> kill the cat
>
I got the impression from the original post that it was the *previous*
owner's/tenant's cat. However, as cruel as some may think it sounds, that
option is sometimes the only effective one.
allen
One of my landlord frienns went through it (odor) from cat and dog urine 2 years ago. He found a
perwon who does cleanups of dead human bodies. This man came in, analyized the 7 room unit on 2
floors and did the entire descenting job for about 600 bucks. he sprayed some chemical on stains
that he identifyed with a moisture meter and then bombed it with neutralizer bombs. I visted a year
later in the humid New England summer and was unable to detect the odor. One floor we had to tear up
but he was able to salvage the rest.
I am about to tackle 10 years of a tenant who had a little dog and never walked it. In this case
the subfloor is soaked as the hardwood opened up 1/4 inch. Yet people wonder why a landlord wants a
security deposit and refuses pets...
Allen
On Sun, 31 Jan 1999 09:46:43 -0500, Jeff & Susan Stringer <stri...@cdc.net> wrote:
>Hi, I'm trying to find adive for a BIG project. I am moving back into
>my childhood home. It's a 3 bedroom rancher built in the late 30's,
>early 40's. It has Hardwood floors throughout the living room, dining
>room, hall & 3 bedrooms. It has been used as rental property for the
>last 20-25 years with wall to wall carpeting. The last tenants had at
>20-30 cats inside the house for at least 5 years. The smell was
>unbearable. All the hardwood floors are now black with old urine
>stains.
>
>We have removed the carpeting and scrubbed the floors with Pine Sol to
>disinfect and remove the foam carpet backing, which was "welded" to the
>floor, this was beyond "stuck". Then we soaked the floors with "Natures
>Wonder" or "Simple Solution" from the pet store, as suggested to
>neutralize the smell. We bought all the store had of one and had to buy
>the other, we are sort of testing to see which is better, the living
>room or the dining room.
>
>The floors were once blonde (oak) but are now dark mahogany splotched.
>The man at the hardware store suggested plain Clorox bleach and bright
Jeff & Susan Stringer
allen wrote:
> As for the odor...
>
> One of my landlord frienns went through it (odor) from cat and dog urine 2 years ago. He found a
> perwon who does cleanups of dead human bodies. ...
Hey! My husband's best friend from high school was a mortian! I wonder if he would know what that
chemical was?
Stupid side bar - said friend performed our wedding cerimony. Yep, we were married by a mortitian.
Latter, we won a Hearse in a Halloween costume contest. That thing is great for hauling things around.
I think it sort of started our whole lives to gether on an odd foot, so we are used to just about
anything.
Hugs, and thanks for all the suggestions!
Susan
Jeff & Susan Stringer
Michael D. Bakakos wrote:
> kill the cat
ROTFLMAO! That's the best suggestion I've had yet!
Now the real kicker to this whole story is that the folks that ruined my floors
are actually old friends of mine. I've spoken to them about the whole
situation, in a very nice, non accusatory way. Both the husband and the wife
each blame the other for the over population of cats. She finally admitted that
their record number of cats at one time was actually 38 - yes sir-ee buddy!
Even cat lovers cringe at the thought of THIRTY EIGHT cats in the house. She
said the critters would fight over who got to have the litter boxes first when
she went through the house changing all 5 of them. The rest of the time, they
just used the floors.
We stopped visiting them when the kitty population got around 20 and the smell
was just beyond me and my husband. Our last dinner in the house was interrupted
when our friend turned on the stove to find some one had peed on the stove.
Wanna talk stench? Try Cat pee burning on a stove eye. WHEW! My mother, the
landlord, stepped in and told them to get rid of the cats or move when she could
smell the cats when sitting in her car in the driveway. By then, it was way to
late.
I have downloaded all your wonderful suggestions to floppy disk so I can print
them out at work. I'm showing all the information to my father who is helping
out with the repairs. He did find me a Wood Bleaching product put out by Behr
with a 10% oxalic solution in it. We are testing it on parts of the floor
today.
We did try calling some professional floor people, but they weren't very
optimistic. I really don't want to pay them $1,400 to refinish the floor when I
know my family will be more earnest in trying to fix the stains and smells. I'm
not looking for perfection, just tolerable stains.
At the moment, we have been concentrating on painting and wallpapering while we
ponder the floor problem. Using Kilz brand paint to cover the really dark paint
and such, plus heavy duty bathroom cleaners is sort of trading one stench for
another. Luckily, here in Tennessee, we have been blessed with warm sunny
weather so we can air it out a lot. Unfortunately, that is forecasted to change
this week.
Thanks a heap for all the help! I'll let you know how it turns out.
Hugs
Susan
NOSPAMBOB
Straight oxalic acid is also available, maybe paint store?
In article
<01769809EE6FDBB8.E7985CC2...@library-proxy.airnews.net>,
Jeff & Susan Stringer <stri...@cdc.net> writes:
> He did find me a Wood Bleaching product put out by Behr with a 10% oxalic
solution in it. We are testing it on parts of the floor today.
>
rbowles96ATaolDOTcom for real E-mail
allen
>
>
>allen wrote:
>
>> As for the odor...
>>
>> One of my landlord frienns went through it (odor) from cat and dog urine 2 years ago. He found a
>> perwon who does cleanups of dead human bodies. ...
>
>Hey! My husband's best friend from high school was a mortian! I wonder if he would know what that
>chemical was?
He should know someone in the cleanup business.
FYI - I had a unit a few years ago where a tenant wemt away for the weekend and closed the door to
the bathroom with littler box. The poor cat peed in one area. I too tried 2 coats of kilz and 2
coats of deck enamel. It didn't work, expecially on hot humid days...
A.