AIBU to ask how on earth to get rid of the previous owners smell from my house?!

[Movinginthesunlight]

We have recently bought and moved into a new house. The previous owners lived there for 2 or 3 decades and there is a strong smell that they have left behind, particularly the main bedroom. I cannot describe the smell other than it isnt dreadful, but it is not pleasant. The smell is sticking to all of our clothes and I can smell it all day on myself outside of the house. It is in my handbag, everywhere.

We have used a few different products on the carpets to clean them. I have machine cleaned them all multiple times, the smell is masked a little bit for a few days and then it is back full force.

I have different types of smellies everywhere, but I need the smell to be removed and not just masked slightly or mixed in with the horrid smell.

What else can be done to clear the smell?

I wonder why it is particularly the main bedroom that smells too.

I am not being paranoid, DH and others can smell it too.

The windows are and have been open since we moved in. I imagine the smell is in the carpet, there must be something else that can be done to break it up, can carpet cleaning is not working!

If you’re going to end up changing the carpets I can highly recommend Designer Carpets - someone on here suggested them on another thread. They have a remnants section where you can search for room sized carpets. I’m in the process of recarpeting and have done it for a fraction of the cost - like a third of what it would have cost for good 80/20 wool mix carpets. They’ll send carpet samples etc and their service is excellent.

It might make a potentially expensive solution much more manageable.

It'll be the carpets. In our home now it had a funny smell, not overpowering just dusty and no amount of cleaning helped. I ripped up all the carpets and old lino and lived with bare tiles (we have concrete floors) for a year until I could put flooring down.

I also sugar soaped all the walls.

Don't just take up the carpet OP as you would be wasting your time. Many people renew a carpet but leave the old underlay down. You will need to take the underlay up too as it may well have been absorbing two or three decades of aromas and spillages. Give the bare floor a thorough vacuum and repeated mop and leave the windows open as much as possible. Do it soon as the smell will already have started to attach itself to your soft furnishings, clothes and so on.

This triggers my own paranoia about our home having a “smell” (which it will inevitably have, as everywhere does).

One of the things I hate about going away is coming back and being aware of it for a few moments before nose-blindness takes over! I don’t think there’s anything particularly unpleasant, but the thought of it still bothers me, especially as I know that other people will likely be more aware of a home’s smell than its inhabitants will!

Rip up carpet and underlay and paint walls, as everyone said. Some people do honk.

Take up the carpet and the underlay. Then you need to properly scrub the floor assuming nothing has soaked into that…all before contemplating new carpet.

Rip up carpet. Imagine how good it will feel to get it gone.
unsure what look you’re after, but we pulled up a carpet and the carpet grippers then painted floor white. So kind of an industrial look. cost was just the paint.

RIP out all the carpets and underlays that’s the only way. Live with floor boards and cheap rugs for a few years. It’s what we had to do when we bought our first house off of an elderly couple with dogs.

Sugar soap the walls too before repainting!

Sometimes it might be a plumbing issue. Stagnant water which drains but then holds again once some water has been used.
Sometimes something in the loft.

How anyone can move into a house with existing carpets and it unpainted blows my mind.

Not everyone has the money straight away
why would I rip up perfectly good carpets that don’t smell? Or paint walls that I like the colour that don’t have any marks/scuffs?

Have you checked behind the radiators?

Is there a cellar?

Are you sure its not damp?

Whats in the loft?

Before ripping up the carpet buy a tonne of bicarb and sprinkle it liberally over the whole carpet. Leave for as long as ypu can and then vacuum it up. And check the other things I mentioned!

Electrical sockets and light fittings can also give off weird smells sometimes as they degrade, give them a sniff to check it’s not them.

Get rid of carpet wash walls down in vinegar and washing up liquid solution. Failing that I see someone commented that it could be a plumbing issue and I think that's a good place to start

When we moved into this house (which had been a student party house), the cleaners we ended up using mostly did industrial cleaning, crime scenes or places where a body hadn't been found for some time. After they said our living room carpet had almost killed their machinery, DH and I just ripped it up and threw it out the window. And discovered nice original floorboards underneath, so win win.

Our house smelt awful when we moved in a combination of sebum and piss. The old carpets had already been removed and we took out the filthy kitchen (20 years of chip fat) but the smelt lingered even though I used every chemical known to mankind. After a few months we eventually tracked it down to the insulation in the loft. There had been an infestation of rats and the smell was their urine plus a few dead bodies (completely mummified). Once this was replaced the smell went overnight.

I found sugar soap was the best cleaner for surfaces but smells definitely gets caught in fibres. Best to replace the bedroom carpet I think.

Have you checked they've not put smelly stuff down the back of radiators floor boards etc. In curtain poles. Mad I know. Was it a house sale or repossession. Hopefully just old carpet and underlay smell.

We had this; even ripping out the carpet didn't fix it. Unfortunately one of the former tenants had been incontinent, the smell didn't go until we had the floorboards replaced and completely redecorated the room.

Amazing thank you!

Thanks! Honestly some people.

Normal house sale.

We have a fairly large bedroom and our new underlay and carpet was under £500 inc fitting. Might be worth getting a price as it might be better than you think

When I moved into my house it smelled of the other family and that dissipated, but the teenage boy’s room still stunk of BO and Lynx until I took the carpet up. Cleaning and painting didn’t do anything. The freezer still smelled of the other family the first couple of times I defrosted it. Weird how scents linger

Does it smell of something specific? Just wondering if the actual nature of the smell might give a clue as to how you might be able to track down the source and get rid of it.

Agree with PPs that carpets are probably the things that smells tend to cling to the most.