Several weeks later, when they were mostly moved out, we went down to make a list of what we needed to do. I was stunned at the odor- it was not that bad just a few weeks before. As we walked through we realized that in those weeks they left their pets to pretty much over-run the house. There were gigantic puffs of fur. The door jambs had all been scratched to hell. The master bedroom was covered with cat poop. I went home and locked myself in my bedroom and bawled for two hours. I expected to find a mess. I was not prepared, though, for just how bad it was.
My husband, sweetheart that he is, told me he would clean up the mess and I didn't have to set foot back in that house until he had done that. That wasn't ok with me either, though. We're in this for better AND for worse. We made the decision to build the house together, to let the family move in together. It would have been completely unfair of me to force him to face clean up alone.
He did, however, single-handedly rip out all of the carpet. Three bedrooms, a landing, and staircase of pee-stained carpet. There were places that were still dripping cat urine a week after they had been gone. Obviously, with stains that bad it had soaked through the carpet, pad, and even the subfloor. We had used a product to treat the floors in our first house to rid it of a subtle odor from the previous owners' cat by Simple Solution. It was an enzyme which required mixing with water to activate the bacteria. It was amazing. Unfortunately, Simple Solution abandoned their fantastic formula to offer a pre-mixed version only. We tried it, and it helped, but it did not cure the pet odor.
I spent a lot of time researching, reading forums for house flippers. I kept reading threads about how cat pee was the worst and how there was no way to remove it without stripping out all of the subfloor and drywall. Now, I helped put almost all of that drywall into that house and I know for a fact that is one job neither of us wants to repeat. NFW. Fortunately on almost every thread there would be one lone voice that seemed to be a flipping expert. Ozone generator, the expert would say.
I don't know if you've ever priced an ozone generator or even heard of one. I thank my lucky stars for the internet because soon enough I learned enough to feel confident buying an ozone generator AND found a company that offered compact units fairly cheap. I went so far as to google the company and it's owner to make sure they were legit. Similar capacity units were more than three times the price at other websites, so I wanted to be sure I was dealing with someone trustworthy.
We opted for the Villa, because our stench was really bad and we were desperate to notice the difference quickly. This thing was amazing. It didn't completely remedy the odor, but made such a significant change. The areas where the cat pee was the worst were almost instantly improved. There was still a funky odor in the kitchen that we couldn't pin point and assumed it was a section of hardwood flooring that had pretty bad water damage. The ozone generator was absolutely worth the cost. It is amazing. Odorfreemachines.com shipped promptly and the unit looks exactly like the picture. It works just as promised. It must be used in a vacant house, which was no problem for us. We fired it up and focused our efforts on the landscaping at our home for a few weeks. We went down almost every day to reset the machine and move it around the house, gauging how well it was working. Just so you know, I'm not getting any kick backs from Odor Free, I'm just a very happy customer.
The unit leaves a sanitizer scent in the air for a short while after using, but that is 10,000x better than cat pee. If you need to deal with cat pee here is my advice: remove what you can, enzyme what remains, then fire up an ozone generator to zap any remaining odor.
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