Cigarette Smoke Damage

5/8/2023 (Permalink)

Years of smoking cigarettes inside has caused significant staining on the walls and ceilings.

Smoking inside your home is not recommended, but tons of people do it anyway. Aside from the obvious fire hazard it presents, the nicotine and residue from the smoke settles on the walls and ceilings of the house causing that yellow brownish color. As you can see in the before image, the walls and ceilings in this home have endured years and years of cigarette smoke. The daughter of this homeowner decided that she had had enough and called SERVPRO in to come and clean the walls and ceilings in two rooms on the main level of the home.

Before SERVPRO could get to cleaning, they had to move some of the content in the rooms off of the walls so that they had access to them. Once that was done and the furniture was covered with plastic, SERVPRO utilized their standard cleaning practices, starting with a dry cleaning method to remove any loose particles before coming in with the wet cleaning process. The dry cleaning utilizes a special chemical sponge that can pull any loose particles and residue that may just be hanging out on the surface. The wet cleaning consists of the use of two chemicals, "Wall and All Surface Cleaner" and "Wall Rinse". Wall and All is used first, this acts as the main cleaning agent and will remove the majority of the heavy staining. In cases like this where the damage is pretty severe, it may take a couple passes with the Wall and All to fully remove the staining. After Wall and All, SERVPRO uses Wall Rinse. Wall Rinse will take care of any minor staining left over as well as remove the Wall and All chemical from the wall to ensure there is no film or residue from the chemical left behind.

In the end the walls and ceilings cleaned up nicely and the customer was extremely pleased with how everything turned out.