I pulled up the twenty-five-year-old carpet in my family room with the intention of installing unfinished oak flooring, but I found a few areas of the 3/4″ subfloor that have a bit of a faint urine smell. Rather than install flooring over it as is, I planned to clean the floor as well as I can and then possibly cost with something like Kilz or shellac to seal in the odor.
Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing who can recommend a product to use to clean the floor and another product to paint on to mask the remaining odors?
Also, do they still put down rosin paper under oak flooring, or do you just install it right on the sub-floor with nothing in-between?
BTW, I do plan to hire a pro to sand and finish the floor since I did that once on my first house with a drum sander and realized pretty quickly that sanding a floor requires some real talent and experience which it was obvious I did not have.
Also, I would love to use a pre-finished floor in this room however it butts up against another room that also has standard oak strip flooring, so I think I need to stick with the unfinished flooring.
Thank you
Replies
I had this in a house we had in the past. A couple of coats of Kilz oil based primer took it away. I think I did a third coat just for the heck of it.
I guess you could put down an asphalt membrane...
Have you thought about first lightly soaking the are with a baking soda/water solution and sealing with KIlz of shellac after it dries. Baking soda works miracles with odors. Been there.
pet smells
The baking soda sounds like a good suggestion. I'll try it out.
I have several cans of Kilz and Bin Zinzer, but most are latex/water-based. I do have a small can of "original" oil-based Kilz so I will give that a try. Not sure if that is the same thing as shellac-based.
Thanks to both of you for your suggestions.
Hydrogen peroxide works well against a lot of odors, but you'd have to soak the floor with it.