Ok All you tightwads, I could use some advice. My cat used one of the bedrooms in my house for a litter box. I cannot get the smell out no matter what I try. Anyone have any suggestions or ideas for replacing the carpet in a 13x11 room for cheap. We just cannot afford to replace it and I cannot come up with any creative ideas. The floor underneath is just plywood. The smell is horriblen and something has to be done. THe cat peed in a 3 by 2 area along the wall.

-- Tiffani (cappello@alltel.net), March 03, 2002

Answers

I bet there must be something that carpet cleaning companies use to eliminate that smell. Try to call around and ask what they use. I'm pretty sure they have to deal with this on a daily basis. Some one is bound to know. Otherwise I think both the carpet and the plywood sub- floor have to go.

-- Okie-Dokie (tjcamp6338@aol.com), March 03, 2002.

My mother painted a plywood floor grey with 3 coats of a concrete floor paint, then splattered 4 or 5 colours of paint all over with brush flicks. Looked very cool.

-- Ross (amulet@istar.ca), March 03, 2002.

White distilled vinegar will totally eradicate cat urine smell from clothes, have you tried that? Try dousing your floor/carpet area with it as a "tightwad" measure before you go pulling all that carpeting out. Good luck!!! Juana PS For clothes, it's one cup vinegar per load of wash.

-- juana (juanamustang@yahoo.com), March 03, 2002.

Oh dear, I'm afraid you will have to replace that patch of wood. If you get another cat in the future it will likely mark its territory where the old cat went no matter how much you think you got the smell out.

I had a pair of shoes our aged cat urinated in. I tried the pet odor removal stuff from Wally World but it didn't work. I finally filled a pan with water and lots of vinegar and let the shoes soak for a day or overnight. The smell was gone as far as I could tell. The shoes were soft vinyl, and rubber soled.

Soaking the wood might not work, especially if the wood is chip board or something.

Maybe you could lay a rag soaked with vinegar on the spot and let it sit there till dried. (after taking up the carpet)

We found a decent area rug for $30 at Sam's club. It appears to be a remnant piece of good quality berber that had the edges bound. If you could find something like that it might work. If you couldn't find an area rug or other remnant large enough to fit the room, could you paint the exposed portion of flooring to hide the fact it is just subflooring? You would have a band of painted wood floor around the edges of the carpet.

Check Lowe's for remnants.

-- LBD, Maryland (lavenderbluedilly@hotmail.com), March 03, 2002.

Dumpster diving to the rescue! Look around for a carpet/flooring place, you won't believe the amount of brand new carpet and padding that goes out for trash. I carpeted my 20 x 20 basement room for free! (ok, so it's 4 different colors, I can live with that!)I like the paint idea also.

-- Kathy (catfish201@hotmail.com), March 03, 2002.

i rented an apartment that had been "cleaned" for cat odor. it came back. i sprayed arm and hammer room deodorizer on floors, ceiling, walls and drapes. that ended the odor.

it permeates the entire room. billie

-- billie schneider (canyonkaty@hctc.net), March 03, 2002.

Unfortunately you will probably need to rip out the carpet AND the pad to get rid of the smell. And hope that the smell hasn't permeated the plywood.

Plywood can be painted by the way. Recently people on this board were recommending painting with KILZ (with lots of ventilation) and it covered any remaining smell in the wood. Painted flooring can be pretty--you could make it look like the old fashioned checkerboard floors....

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), March 03, 2002.

How about removing the damaged carpet and building a benchbox with storage under the seat to cover the space missing the carpet? Deoderize and seal the floor first of course.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), March 03, 2002.

Im not sure about where you are, but saturday is clearance day at lowe's. My hubby is a vendor there and he was almost trampled in the deluge yesterday morning...LOL.. just a thought.

-- Kristean Thompson (pigalena_babe@yahoo.com), March 03, 2002.

I'd pull back the carpet, replace the pad that was peed on, paint the plywood and use Febreeze on the carpet. If that doesn't work, I'd try throwing it all out and painting the floor with a couple coats of paint. Use the Kilz primer or Zinsser primer first. I hope it works for you! Nothing' worse than cat pee smell! Ick!

-- Wingnut (wingnut@moment.net), March 03, 2002.

Do you have a male cat? If so, you probably also will need to do something about the wall and floor moulding in this area. I agree with Jay. Maybe build something over the spot after you take up the carpet and padding.

-- Cindy in NY (cjpopeck@worldnet.att.net), March 03, 2002.

I've had pretty good success with the Arm and Hammer pet oder stuff, but if that dosn't work, you can just pull up the carpet-and pad and paint the subfloor-we did that to our kids rooms, and its held up really well. Definatly check for discounts at Lowes-at some stores, they sell paint thats been returned or mixed wrong for really low prices-now, some of it is yuck-o colors but I have picked up some nice cheap paint that was a decent color-also sometimes they have rements for cheap as well.

-- Kelly (KY) (homearts2002@yahoo.com), March 03, 2002.

Can.t help with the smell,but if you have the grain looking plywood and not the particle board (osb) I have seen people sand them and stain them and then draw fake lines with I believe a dye pen or pencil to make it look like a hardwood floor,suprisingly it looks really good, or make wider lines to give it an old plank look.Dave (central frozen WI)

-- Dave (duckthis1@mybogusemail.com), March 03, 2002.

A friend of mine had this same problem in a back bedroom. She tried everything to remove the smell with no luck. Finally had a professional carpet cleaning company with a "money back" policy come out, They could not get the smell out either! She ended up pulling up carpet & pad and airing the room for a few days. Then sealed & put down linoleum.

-- ellie (elnorams@aol.com), March 03, 2002.

Depends on how bad your problem is. Friend bought a house where the cats must have used the dining room for the litter box - a lot.

Nothing to do in the end but remove all carpet, pad, & most of the flooring, some of the molding & sheetrock even. Rather than cheaper, this is starting to sound expensive, eh? :)

--->Paul

-- paul (ramblerplm@hotmail.com), March 04, 2002.

Don't waste your money on anything but KILZ paint. The carpet cannot be salvaged--just toss it out. Then paint the floor with KILZ. It is truly the ONLY product I have found that works, and I have tried them all.

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), March 04, 2002.

Toss the carpet and pad. If you have to replace the piece of wood too to get rid of the smell, look around and see if can found a used piece of plywood the same thickness as the other.

Paint is a good option and can look nice with a couple of throw rugs. Also, in January we retiled our kitchen and big den/living room with self-stick tiles and we are really pleased with the results! Our rooms are huge but it wouldn't take much tile to do your floor. and they would likely work if your plywood floor is in good condition! we had a couple of spots in corners that weren't too good but we couldn't afford to do anything about them now so we just tiled over them...so far so good...nobody walks in the corners!

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), March 04, 2002.

Kilz then paint. Paint with a faux tiling effect. Use decking paint.

-- Gailann Schrader (gtschrader@aol.com), March 04, 2002.

Toss carpet & pad, wash w/white vinegar, apply Kilz.

I will second the idea that you can find a lot of good carpet dumpster diving, unused pad as well, but if the cat is going to keep urinating on the area, it will continue to be a problem.

Years ago they made a product for finishing floors that consisted of a basecoat of paint, a bag of colored chips to sprinkle on top of the paint (such as a peach color paint, with chips of white, tan, brown, gold, and eggshell -- really pretty), and then it had some kind of clear sealant that was painted over it, rather like marine polyurethane. I don't know if that is still available, but the floors we did 20+ years ago still look great and it doesn't absorb anything and is easy to keep clean.

I once saw a really great floor that someone had done themselves -- they tore up chunks of brown Kraft paper and applied the irregular pieces onto the plywood on the floor, using urethane. They tore the paper up in pieces the size of flagstones (about 18 to 24"), and applied them irregularly, overlapping, using coats of polyurethane. The end result was great, looked sort of like flagstone, sort of like leather, and was really durable and washable. You can add washable cotton throw rugs over it if you like then, and if the cat pees on those, you can easily toss them into the washer.

-- julie f. (rumplefrogskin@excite.com), March 04, 2002.

There's a chemical at janitorial outlets called Air-X. It's for getting rid of cat smells and other strong odors. Maybe for a last ditch effort before throwing carpet and pad.Good luck!

-- Joyce (rejoyceom@yahoo.com), March 04, 2002.

painting the floor is fun! my daughter has a lawn in her room with a moat (around the castle bed of course) . A plain green first then a grass greensponged over with a sea sponge. Son has a big space station emblam. On one show (or magazinew?) they were painting what looked liked athrow rug/welcome mat in a big entrance. Checkerboards are fun. I had not heard the one above about the paper but it sounded really cool and aseasy.Don't forget a good sealer over it all or your work will be ruined.

-- Novina in ND (homespun@stellarnet.com), March 04, 2002.

Cleaning up cat odours was covered quite comprehensively in the past. I can't tell you what category it was in, but one thread I found with a google search is

http://hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0075FS

Copy and paste that into your browser address window.

They recommend an enzyme product called Nature's Miracle, emphasise that you have to use it according to directions, and that things will smell worse while it's doing its job and working the smell out, but youi have to stick with it and not chicken out.

The thing you do have to do though is address the question of WHY your cat did that, or you will go on having the problem again and again and ... that could get old fast.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), March 04, 2002.

Forget the natural home remidies.

There are many commercial products. These attack the odor molocule and keep it from stinking. There is a problem, the stuff must get to the smell, thus you may have to soak the carpet/pad/flooring. Most Americans are scared of applying too much, second most don't follow dilution directions. I buy used cars that stink of smoke (sorry smokers) This drives down the value, so I spray the entire interior down with a weed pump sprayer, say 1 1/2 gallons for a midsized car. It will work.

If you are near a Sam's club look for ODOR BAN 10 bucks will make 30 gallons.

-- Marc (toymeister@hotmail.com), March 04, 2002.

Tiffani, First - get rid of the carpet - it will NEVER be the same! I have 6 cats and know about odor problems! I was begining to think there was NO solution to this problem until my husband ran across an article in some obscure science journal. It seems that a certain chemist was working on creating a product for this very purpose, and actually managed to create it. Problem was (is) that it has to be made fresh each time because it is chemically unstable and cannnot be packaged to last. In short, it could not be sold because it had zero shelf life. So... he offered the formula as a "public service" to anyone who wanted to try it. It is also very simple and very cheap!

Take equal parts hydrogen peroxide and baking soda, add a short squirt of liquid dish detergent and stir lightly. Use immediately by pouring it directly on the odiferous surface, and let stand until dry. (Pre-clean the spot, of course.) When the surface is dry, just sweep up the white powder residue. With very old or really bad spots you might have to repeat a couple of times, but it actually does work. Just don't make more than you can use at once, because it becomes totally useless within a few minutes.

When the smell is gone, sand your floor and use deck paint on it. You can top that with a painted design to look like a patterned rug. Seal with a couple of clear coats and voila! A new rug that is REALLY washable. Good Luck!

-- Deborah Stephenson in MO (wonkaandgypsy@hotmail.com), March 05, 2002.