One of my regular customers just had a house fire. The fire was relatviely small only a few thousand dollars worth of damage. However the smoke and water damage is pretty extensive. A large fire restoration company removed, cleaned and are storing most of the household items.
This company supposedly washed all of the walls and ceilings with some special chemical. I am not real impressed with the cleaning job. The plaster still has a lot of grey to black smoke stains all over them. I used a little water on a paper towel and did a test spot and was able to remove more of the smoke damage. I am sure if I used a chemical the plaster would come much cleaner.
I have never seen plaster walls that have been “supposedly” professionally cleaned after a fire and prior to painting. I can not imagaine that these walls could possibly be clean enough to paint. Anyone know how clean these walls should be prior to painting? What kind of cleaner should I use? Do I need to apply a nutralizer prior to painting?
I prime and seal all work new and old before applying 2 top coats of paint on all of my projects. I am thinking of using 1 or 2 coats of primer/ sealer (Something like Kilz) prior to applying the top coats of paint. Anyone know of a better product to use to seal the smoke damage?
The insurance company put in their estimate “Paint the walls and ceiling – two coats DUE TO FIRE, NOT INCLUDING SEALANT”. I cannot understand why the insurance adjuster would eliminate priming the plaster prior to painting “due to a fire”. I would think this would be all the more reason to prime and seal the plaster.
Replies
Slightly different problem. But I worked on a house that have 50 years of HEAVY SMOKING and I don't think that the it was cleaned once in those 50 years. Used Greased Lightning to clean the walls and it just poured off the walls.
A thing that most any general purpose household cleaner would be much of it off.
And at the time I did not research and the general rule for sealing smoke smells was 2 coats of an oil based sealer (Kilz) or one of pigmented shellac (Bin).
If the smells are real bad you can get an ozone machine to put in the house for a couple of days. But I think that it needs to be unoccuppied.
William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
I used at least a dozen household and commercial cleaners. Greased lighting won hands down. The only thing that worked better was Goof Off. I would be afraid to use Goof Off for fear of compromising the the integrity of the latex paint.
Thanks for the tip
Paul
The wonder part of Kilz is shellac, shellac will seal all odor and prevent it from coming back. However to seal in soot is just askin for trouble..
BIN, not Kilz. Kilz is oil based..
William the Geezer, the sequel to Billy the Kid - Shoe
+1 on pigmented shellac ie. BIN for smoke sealing.
For fire jobs, we always used tsp first, then oil based kilz.
I think "two coats DUE TO FIRE, NOT INCLUDING SEALANT" means two coats after the primer coat.