<p>I am again seeking your sage advice for a problem. My fiance and I moved into an apartment a couple weeks ago, which has a small, spare bedroom. Other than some damage to the floor and a really ugly paint color which the landlord gave us permission to paint, it wasn’t spectacular but not something we were worried about. </p>
<p>However, this past week had a few days that were exceptionally hot and humid, and now it is becoming very apparent than a cat was kept in that room and it stinks! I’ve tried to look some tips up online but everything I’m seeming to find is to deal with newish cat urine with a known location, whereas we’re dealing with an entire, albeit small, room. </p>
<p>With the way that it smells, it is unusable and I am very upset. We just sent the lease in before the hot weather came around and now the smell in there is unbearable. Is there anything that we can do to take the odor out, and any advice for recourse with the landlord? The rest of the apartment is totally fine, except for that room. </p>
<p>Thanks in advance!</p>
<p>EDIT: Oops! Meant to post this in the Cafe. If someone could move it that would be great.</p>
<p>Go to a major pet store and get some stuff made for that purpose. If it is in carpet it is beyond help and needs to be removed and the floor under treated too. Hard to get rid of completely but it can get better. Might require several applications. LL should fix it really.</p>
<p>Yes. The landlord needs to have the carpet removed, the floor sealed (just paint with KILZ or something like that) (and walls primed if it is also on the walls). I wouldn’t spend the money on treatments for carpet until you try to get the landlord to fix it. If you HAVE to do it yourself… and it will still cost you some money … Kids and Pets liquid works pretty well if you drench the carpet - but it would take a LOT.</p>
<p>I should clarify that it is hardwood flooring in the room that is affected. I will be furious if we are expected to take care of this ourselves. If the odor had been noticeable when we toured the place I would not have agreed to rent it. It would figure that we did not have any very humid days until after the lease was signed and mailed, and that any odors before that were masked by products being used in our bathroom reconstruction (which was paid for and finished as a part of the lease).</p>
<p>The pet odor stuff uses enzymes to breakdown the smell so it takes time to work. It is probably into the subfloor so use liberally. I had a basement concrete floor with the same problem and it took multiple gallons of the product $20 per in three applications to make a good dent. In my case I am the LL and the tenant had cats. Never again.</p>
<p>When cats urinate outside their litter boxes they are typically “spraying” to mark territory. This means that they stand with their hindquarters near a wall and spray onto that. Then it soaks into the lower part of the drywall, the baseboard, and the sub-floor.</p>
<p>You need to contact the landlord, because 1) it’s their responsibility to make the room inhabitable, and 2) you could end up damaging the wood and other areas by soaking them with a treatment, and then the landlord will blame you and charge you for repairs.</p>
<p>I had a long term problem with a previous cat, tried many different products, and found Nature’s Miracle for Cats to be superior in eliminating the odors on carpeted and soft areas.</p>
<p>We had major cat odors when we bought our first house years ago. Had to pull up carpets and just get rid of the carpet. The sellers went through alot of trouble to mask the odor when the house was being shown. We thought initially alot of the odor was coming from the hardwood floors. However, we realized that the cats had urinated in the ductwork on the floor for the central air. So, check that if you have any ductwork. We had to have the ductowrk professionally cleaned.The whole thing was disgusting .Good luck with this! You should be firm with the landlord that you expect him to take care of this.</p>
<p>We had friends who bought a house and discovered a closet stank of cat urine. After months of trying to get rid of the smell, it turned out the walls of the closet were the problem. They had to have the sheet rock ripped out and replaced.</p>
<p>I have always had cats and have had a couple that I had problems with in this area. Love my pets, but cats that pee in the house quickly become outdoor cats. Cat pee stinks.</p>
<p>You might want to see if you can get out of the lease and move elsewhere rather than trying to fix this problem. You’re in for hassle either way but if you move you’ll no longer have to deal with that particular cat odor (and be careful on the next place - sniff around like crazy and ask if the previous tenant had a cat).</p>
<p>I’m assuming there are some laws that might help you with breaking this lease but laws vary from locale to locale so check first. Maybe the LL will do the right thing and let you out of the lease.</p>
<p>If you decide to stay there then in the event some of the smell is in the walls, use a good odor-blocking primer on the walls before you apply paint. And make the LL pay for it.</p>
<p>You don’t get to just break your lease–you have to advise the landlord of the problem (in writing–registered mail, and keep records) and allow the landlord a reasonable amount of time to correct the situation.</p>
<p>You can locate the actual urine spots with black light. And if you came to my store, we would send you home with the most concentrated form of odor remover, the one for SKUNKS!</p>
<p>MommaJ - Obviously she can’t just declare the lease is broken and leave and still get deposits back. I didn’t say she could. She can, however, try asking to get out of the lease first in the event she has an accommodating LL. If that doesn’t work she can pursue the other avenues by doing the formal request and also determining if there are any laws that might help her. Some LLs will do nothing and trivialize the issue. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that if she considers the property unlivable then she needs to do something including getting out of there.</p>
<p>It’s not unlivable, just the one room. The rest of the apartment is totally fine, and I’m guessing that the room has been cleaned before because now that the humidity is lowered and we have a nice cool day, the room doesn’t smell anymore. I’ve read around online that the humidity can draw the smell out of the flooring and baseboards even if it has been cleaned very well.</p>
<p>I discussed with the landlord and he wants me to try removing everything from the room and washing the walls to see if the smell goes away. I was planning on doing this anyway because I want to paint the room white (which the landlord agreed to) since it is small and the color in there right now is really ugly. I’m hoping that this will take care of most of the problem. This really isn’t a room that we plan to use very much as more than storage, but we still don’t want it to stink. If this doesn’t make the smell away, I will insist that the landlord have it cleaned and he already said he would if it didn’t work.</p>
<p>Febreze. Lots and lots of Febreze. Spray until wet on any surface that smells even slightly.</p>
<p>We had this problem when we bought our house. Besides the Febreze, we set up a zeolite air filter in the furnace. It took a while but the smell is gone now.</p>
<p>There was a crazy lady in our town who collected about 50 cats which urinated all over her house. The concrete floor had to be busted out and replaced. Just painting with Kilz won’t always cut it. The owner of your apartment might have to completely remove and replace the hardwood flooring… or maybe at least get you oxygen masks to breathe.</p>
<p>OH YUK, quick story…We were the owners of a place where two young ladies kept a couple of cats (agreed too before we took ownership). When they moved out it became apparent the entire place had been used as a litter box. We had to tear out the floor, some of the wall board (because it seeped into the sheet rock), replace the closet door tracks (urine condensed to the consistency of honey) and replace all of the risers on the internal stairs. We sued them and won for 5K of damages. Attached their wages and it took about 2 years to collect.</p>
<p>So, OP, if a few tries with Febreez does not do the trick, let the landlord know. In the LL’s defense, if the place had been aired out by the previous tenants during the walk through, it may just not have been apparent. If you wish to see where the urine is lurking, get a black light, darken the room and shine it around - urine will glow. Depending on the LL’s situation, they may still have recourse against the previous tenant.</p>
<p>Oh yes…and we now have a strict NO PET rule.</p>
<p>I do have a blacklight at home (back from middle school, haha) so I might poke around with that sometime soon. Unfortunately I’ve come down with a nasty cold so I’m a little out of commission for a bit. </p>
<p>I do have to say that I should’ve foreseen this when I agreed to rent the place. One of the reasons I was interested in this apartment building is because cats ARE allowed and my fiance and I are planning on adopting a couple shelter cats once we get our living situation more stabilized (not living out of boxes). All the more reason to make sure that the smell situation is taken care of because I don’t want them picking up on the scent of other cats and also peeing there. </p>
<p>I really don’t think that the landlord knew about the smell. It really wasn’t apparent until we had a couple of record heat/humidity days in a row and then it came out with a vengeance.</p>