I put beadboard wainscotting up in my youngest daughter’s room a few months ago. Sealed/primed the pine with BIN, before three coats of Benjamin Moore EcoSpec. I don’t smell anything, but my wife still says it stinks in there, and has forbidden anyone to use the room until the smell goes away.
I assume that what she’s smelling now is some sort of plasticiser as opposed to the solvents, but I don’t understand.
Does anyone have any ideas how to remedy this? If there is no solution, how long am I going to have “the forbidden room”?
Help!
Replies
Keep it closed up and the odor will never go away.
I waited (well, I was busy) for a couple weeks before putting the paint over the primer/sealer, and been opening the windows every day it's not too cold out since.Amateurs talk strategy, Generals talk logistics.
Did you install new carpet?A Great Place for Information, Comraderie, and a Sucker Punch.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
No, there's a hardwood floor.Amateurs talk strategy, Generals talk logistics.
Was that the shelac-based BIN? Its solvent is alcohol and the odor should go away very quickly.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
Is your wife an X-smoker? My DW quit about 8 years ago and ever since it's been "do you smell that #### smell?" It started about 4 months after she quit.
No, she's ever smoked. I just generally have a poor sese of smell, and hers is keen.Amateurs talk strategy, Generals talk logistics.
My DW constantly complained about the smell of our direct vent gas fireplace. Granted it is supposed to have zero air exchange with the air in the living space. I went back and forth with the supplier. Finally they said would replace it. I ended up chickening out because the custom mantle I had spend a number of hours building would have to be ripped out. Would likely result in drywall damage too. Of course all that would be my problem. Then we had a big storm - hurricane. No electricity for 5 days which meant no heat. It wasn't real cold that week so it wasn't unbearable but let me tell us this - DW now loves that fireplace.... :-)
You say that you can't smell it but she says she can. I take that to mean that it is probably a faint smell. It's probably more just locked in her mind from back when the smell was strong. Not meaning to be abrasive here, but some people seem to get stuck on the little things in life and just need to move on...
Bin is shellac based. The funny thing is that shellac is often used for covering and sealing wood, etc that has an odor like in fire damage. Shellac itslef is non toxic, although I'm not sure what else is in BIN and the alcohol solvent is probably responsible for the smell. My guess that the smell has permeated into the other building materials in the room such as the floor covering.
A few steps toward abatement might be to remove other materials in the room. Baring that if you placed a large amount of absorbent material in the room, some of the smell may be removed. Believe it or not newspaper is very absorbent for smell. Crumple up a bunch and let it sit in there for a week. Then throw it out and replace with new. Charcoal is also very odor absorbent.
Edited 1/9/2008 7:54 am ET by Matt
Fry fish in the room.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
I just generally have a poor sese of smell, and hers is keen.
BS!
Don't believe her for a second.
My wife tries the same #### with me.
Once a week she smells something burning....or gas....or some "funky" odor....
Its all a set up! She's just waitin' for that ONE time to be right!
That one time happened two weeks ago around here. As I walked in the door at the end of the day, she's havin' one of her..."something's burning" moments. "I smell it by the basement stairs.....but not anywhere else".
I tell her, "OK...I'll check it out".
Turned out she was right.(This time) Relay switch on the boiler had fried.
She says, "Ya see.... you're always tellin' me I'm crazy....I was right. Something was burning".
Yeah....after about 500 "somethings burning" moments in the past 18 years, something finally was.
J. D. ReynoldsHome Improvements
and did U ask her why she was playing with the relay switch!
Jeff Buck Construction
Artistry In Carpentry
Pittsburgh Pa
Oh, I know why she was playing with it.
She was lookin' for her "I told you so" moment!
J. D. ReynoldsHome Improvements
I have a terrible nose but a few times it's been right about gas. Once in a brand new apartment I smelled it. Husband didn't. Called the gas company and they were there a while but didn't catch it with their sniffers. Then, before they packed up, the water heater clicked on and wheee, wheee, wheee their sensors went off. Then in this house I kept smelling it. A whiff and then gone. Had the gas people out several times and they couldn't find anything. Then when I had my furnace serviced they found a cracked heat exchanger. New furnace and the smell was gone.
I now trust my nose more than those mercaptin sniffers, especially since a house down the road exploded and killed 2 people. The gas guy was one of them and he had gone into the house to reignite the pilot after fixing a leak in the street. His equipment didn't save him or the young mother who was in the house at the time.
My grandpa always said Grandma was imagining things--especially noises, so he ignored her when they drove home from their cottage and she said she heard a "jingling sound." After a while she said maybe she was imagining things, she didn't hear it anymore. When they got home, it turned out Grandpa, always the careful one, had slammed the hose to the cannister vac in the trunk so it hung down with the metal end resting on the ground. Eventually the road ground away at it until it wasn't touching any more!
Our arguments aren't over whether there's a smell or not, but whether it's "normal". In particular, odors from anywhere in our house concentrate in the front entryway for some reason, so you get them right when you come in the front door. (Or walk up/down the stairs, for that matter.)For a year after we moved in there was a faint propane smell there which I figured was normal with the propane furnace, but it bugged the wife big time. But then I was sitting in the utility room one day, plumbing up a water softener, and I heard this very faint "sssssss". Traced it down to a fitting feeding the furnace that wasn't quite tight. Added a little teflon tape and the odor went away.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
When I first got married, both of us kept smelling gas by back door, near basement stairs and we have gas furnace and gas water heater. Called the gas company two or three times and they'd come out with their sniffers and could never find anything. So I went down to the basement and painted soapy water on all the pipes and found the leak in about a minute.
When I was an intern on the lab side at Wright Pat AFB, someone poured some mercaptan into the sewer at the top of the hill. Evacuated buildings down the hill, one after the other.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
Yuch! When my bro was a co-op in high school in a lab at Dow Corning, someone spilled a drum of the aromatic ester (?) that smells like cherries--he said that smell gets overpowering and evil when there's so much of it.
(I was visiting him once and he was using HF under a hood and I got a stray current--felt like someone had lit a kitchen match in my nose!)
In was in the first class at Seneca HS.IIRC this happened the 2nd year and they had just finished this wing. I think still finishing the 2nd floor as we where using the first floor.We had chem lab with a fume hood. The teacher kept a hydrogen sulfiide generator going in the hood for some expeeriments that we where doing.Turns out that when they started occupying the 2nd floor that they had ever finished the duck work and we where pumping the fumes into the 2nd floor labs..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Remembering a time down in T-town when I was working in a low-income neighborhood when across the street a guy comes rushing out of a house, jumping in his car and saying to me 'There's a gas leak!A gas leak!!' and peeling out as he sped away.
Lady comes out of the house knowing of me as working for her landlord who had various properties in the area and wants me to come check for the gas leak.
Well it was one of the guy's houses and figured worst thing would be getting the lady out of the house before something serious so I went in.
As we went walking thru the house she had a can of air freshener hanging down her hand she kept spraying around and I'm thinking like 'what the hey?'.
I check all the appliances and lines and notta, no smells either.
So there we were kinda huddled in her little shotgun shanty kind of place and she says listen so we got real quiet and you could hear a tiny hiss.
I follow the sound and find a pipe running thru inside a closet to an outside water faucet hose bib they hadn't completely shut off hence the tiny hiss.
So I realize why the guy left so paranoid. They were in there blowing doobies and heard the hiss stoned and freaked out and the woman was spraying the airfreshener to cover up the pot smell! Roar!
just another story. no charge.
be shoulda told the boss I needed hazard pay for working in those neighborhoods.Peace out.
At the time I was doing some software developement and had the hardware mockup in my home office. I was making a panel of switches to mount on the mockup. Used some plywood which I had just cut and drilled in the basement.Then was in the office soldering them up the switches and cables.Kept smelling a very faint wood burning smell. Only in the office. Went down to the basement and nothing. Did this several times over an hour or two.But I would only smell it in the office. Kept thing that maybe it was the combination of wood dust in my nose and the burning rosin from soldering.But still did not seem right.About the 4th time I was on the way to check in the basement again I heard some cracklying sound from the garage.Had a fire going in the garage..
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A-holes. Hey every group has to have one. And I have been elected to be the one. I should make that my tagline.
Local fireman had a serious run-in with some burning fumes a number of years back.
He now has no sense of smell or taste. Said he could be eating rotted meat and he wouldn't know it.
Be glad ya got yer sniffer.Peace out.
LOL...good one.
J. D. ReynoldsHome Improvements
>>> I don't smell anything, but my wife still says it stinks in there,
I'd use the room for myself, turn in into an office or a studio for my hobbies.
BIN is just shellac (completely safe, even for ingesting) with an alcohol solvent (also safe in low concentrations). Not much chance that there is still alcohol after months.
Dunno about the paint, but the BM web page makes me think it's also very people-friendly.
Is the room carpeted? Drapes? Those things can hold odors for a good while. If so, you may want to try spreading some baking soda around on the rug/curtains, and vacuuming it up in a few days. I agree with the poster who said that it will never get better if it's kept closed up.
Or, you could secretly smoke cigars in every other room in the house -- then the bedroom would seem as fresh as Spring mountain air. ;-)
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
Paint the REST of the house man!!!
this is your chance to be free!!
;)
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I have Transcended the need for Pants....
oooohhhhmmmmmm......
I would be looking for other causes of the odor. I have used EcoSpec and it was virtually undetectable the very next day. Could it be the beadboard itself? Was it wood or a composite? Did you seal the back?
Yeah, certainly fresh wood will have an odor, especially your softwoods. What type of wood was it?
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
The wainscotting was pine. I didn't prime the back of it.Amateurs talk strategy, Generals talk logistics.
I'm guessing she's smelling the wood. Tell her it's a natural, woodsy odor. (Not that it'll do any good.)Get 3-4 friends to visit and smell the room, and ask them to describe what odor (if any) they detect.
If your view never changes you're following the wrong leader
Actually coffee is a very good odor absorber. Get some fancy flavored coffee that your wife will like the scent of and place it in opened containers around the room.
Brew up the rest as a treat for yourself while you read the Sunday paper.
Garett
put a strong FAN in the room and keep the air moving; you don't need to open windows to move the air out necessarily. cure time still smells and moving the air with a fan will help
Activated charcoal is really good at absorbing many odors - and most of those room 'air purifier' fans you see have activated charcoal in the filter. For under %50, you can get one, put it in the room, and let it run.
Use charcoal briquets, the ones for your grill. Don't use the matchlight type just plain old Kingsford charcoal. Place it in the room in shoe boxes on plastic or anything. Run a small fan on low and any odor should be gone pretty quickly. My wife has the same nose.
I'll try that.
thanks.
My ex used to complain about a gas smell in our first house. I could never smell it, but she was insistent. Finally, after 2 months, I call the gas company. The guy comes out with sniffer and bubble solution. He started at the meter and got a signal with the sniffer but couldn't find a leak at the meter. We both stood there scratching our heads and he suddenly throws all the bubble water on the ground under the meter. It immediately foams up everywhere. Lots of big bubbles. The gas main under ground had corroded open. They evacuated us and brought in an emergency crew to fix it. I couldn't help but notice one of the crew was smoking while they dug...
I gotta say, I always believe it when a woman says she smells something...it's survival.
Now, what does your wife say it smells like? Any gas lines nearby?
Frank