How to remove smoke smell from furniture - Farmhouse China Cabinet Makeover

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I've been in weird buying used furniture frenzy the past month. It snowballed from buying couches, to buying a secretary hutch, to a dresser, and then to this china cabinet I'm sharing with you today. I didn't plan on buying a new piece for my front living room until I came across one while looking for a new dresser that totally spoke to me. It was a beautiful and amazing farmhouse hutch, from a literal old rotting farmhouse in the middle of a field...but would be a 6 hour round trip drive and cost me almost $400. When I saw it on the listing, I had to find a place in my house that would fit it. I didn't even need it, wasn't even thinking about getting one. But, I had to figure out how to make it work. :)  I then realized how nice it would be to have the extra storage and a new place to decorate, etc etc. In the end, I decided not to get it. But since I realized that I did have a need for something like that, I went on a search to find a cheaper and closer one. I found this beauty....

Although, this china cabinet didn't look like that to begin with! Here's the before:

Funny enough, it doesn't look so bad in pictures and that's what made me love it. The color was beautiful, the lines were perfect. The size was great. It had all the drawers and the cabinet space. I could decorate the top. It wasn't the $400 one, but I knew I could make it perfect and even better. That was until I got it home. It smelled...oh it smelled so bad. When I bought it, it was in the person's open garage. I didn't think to put my nose to it. I didn't think to ask if it came from a none smoking house. I didn't even smell it while carrying it inside my house. I started to notice a weird musty smell. My young one kept telling me it smelled like a hotel room in our front living room. I just nodded in agreement. It smelled a little... or so I thought. I then left the next day, and came back. I pretty much had to leave my house after walking 3 feet in. The smoke smell was so strong and so awful. It was overpowering. All I wanted was to toss it out the door. 

I was telling myself that how could I even sell this to someone else? It was that bad. I would have to give it away or send it to the dump. I was sick to my stomach how much time and money I had just wasted.

I decided to try to salvage it, so I tried a couple of things to get rid of the smell. The first thing was using a great primer. I used the Kilz 2 primer. Two coats in hopes that it would do the trick.

It did not. It was just as bad...if not worse. Plus the tannin started coming through and at that point, I thought it was a lost cause. I figured I would just finish the painting and give it away...if anyone would even want it. Seriously...the smoke odor was out of this world. It was starting to seep into other parts of my house. I had to leave the door cracked all day while I was home. I would have moved it outside, but the days I was working on it, my husband was gone and there was no way I could do it by myself. 

I decided to go to the store and look at the Kilz primers to see why mine didn't work. I then realized quickly that the one that I used initially didn't say anything about covering up odors and only protected against miner stains/tannin. I found the Kilz original primer that blocked heavy stains and odors.

I decided to give it a try. I put one coat on, and it seemed to work. I painted the inside of the bottom cabinets to get rid of the smell in there too. This is what one coat of the original primer looked like on top of the other 2 coats. That being said, I don't think the other two coats even mattered at this point. They did nothing at all!

I gave it a day to see if that primer helped, and it did. I could barely smell the smoke smell when walking inside the room. I even had a friend come over and tell me if she smelled anything. The primer itself has a very very intense smell. So for awhile there, I didn't know what was better...lol...the smoke or the primer! But I knew the primer smell would go away. It did...and it took like 95% of the smoke smell along with it.

I then did 2 coats of my top coat paint. I used Swiss Coffee by Behr in their interior enamel in satin. I painted the inside and outside of everything, besides the drawers....and the smoke smell is gone! I seriously thought that this was going to go to the dump, there was no salvaging it. 

Here are my tips to get rid of the smoke smell, ones that I used and then some more that my Instagram friends suggested:

• Air it out. Open all the doors and drawers to the piece. If it's inside, leave windows and doors open. Move it outside if possible. 
• Paint it with a good primer that covers the odors and stains. I used Kilz Original primer.
• Do multiple coats of paint and primer.
• Paint all the areas, even the insides of the piece.
• Put bowls of vinegar in and around the piece for a couple of days. Switch out the vinegar every day.
• Put baking soda in bowls to absorb the smell. 
• Someone even mentioned putting vanilla in bowls on the shelves, and using plastic wrap to wrap the whole piece up. 

Luckily, I didn't need to use anything else besides the primer, paint and air. But I know for a fact that vinegar would be the next thing I would try. A couple of years ago, our old dog got sprayed by a skunk. It was late at night and we didn't notice until he was in the house for about a good hour. We noticed this awful smell that wreaked of mechanical scent. We couldn't figure out what the heck the smell was...totally thinking our house was going to blow up or something. ha! With some research...and then smelling the dog, we realized what had happened. By then, the skunk smell had gone into every square inch of our house. We opened all the windows and doors (this was January, middle of winter with a newborn baby!), we laid sheets and blankets on our couches, and then used gallons of vinegar placed in bowls throughout our house. We did this for like 2 or 3 days, and luckily the smell went away! Our house smelled like a weird mixture of vinegar and skunk...but the vinegar won! 

So, now that the smoke smell was gone from the china cabinet, it was time to decorate it and add all the stuff...without having to worry about "all the stuff" stinking like smoke :) I envisioned having a ladder here, so I made one using this tutorial. I stained it first to see how it looked. I didn't like it...thought it was to cluttered.

So, I painted it white and it fit in so much better! I added all the books I could find that weren't being used around my house already to line the top two shelves.

I went through my basement and found even more goodies to decorate the top of the china cabinet. I've played around with this stuff almost every day for the past week. I'm sure it'll be changing again soon! I never thought much about what to display in a china cabinet, never thinking that I would ever have one! So, it was a fun decorating process.

I finally found a wonderful place to display my growing collection of amber glass. Had I had more books, I would have put books down here too. But, once I got my amber glass in here I think I've changed my mind about the books. 

I love the farmhouse feel of this piece. Like always, I initially wanted to distress this hutch, but once I painted it all white I couldn't. Also, the fear of the smoke smell seeping through those little distressed cracks pretty much put a stop to it! haha. 

Okay...now brace yourselves. This corner was actually our homeschool corner I carved out in my front room back in August. In fact, I moved a huuuuge hutch down into our basement just to make room for this cute little area. So, it's funny that I moved this to make room for another huuuuge hutch :)

Well, homeschool has been moved back onto the dining room table since I broke my foot. Plus, that desk was only ever used for the first month or so. All the school work got done on the couch or the floor....and this pretty little area quickly started looking like this on a daily basis.

So...yeah. That's reality. A little embarrassing...but real. This corner has always been a catch all, it was only made worse by actually have a desk for everything to "catch" on.  I took this picture right before I moved everything out of the way to make room for the china cabinet, and as you can see, the calendar still says October, and this happened in the latter part of February. I think the decision to clear this space out was definitely a good one. Now I have cabinet storage for a lot of that. All the homeschool stuff is now in the bottom...plus room for crafts! We never used the charts so that was easy to pull down. I did buy extra chairs for this area, but now they will just go into storage for when we have extra guests. So, in the end, it all worked out. Sometimes you change an area, and just realize that it doesn't work anymore...and this was one of those times. 

Now this space is so much cleaner...and stays clean. My dining room on the other hand...well that stayed clean while homeschool was in my front room, and now that's a different story. ha! But, that has to be cleaned off every day so we can eat on it. So, it's a little bit easier to keep up on.

So, tell me, do you have any more tips on how to remove smoke smell from furniture? I'm still surprised that the smoke smell is completely gone from the china cabinet. It was so...so awful and strong. It gave me headaches and everything! I'm glad I pushed through it and found something to get rid of the smoke smell because I love this piece so much! 

I'll be sharing lots of fun process videos of decorating this china cabinet, paint it, and doing the ladder on my Instagram. So, be sure to follow me there for all the behind the scenes fun!

  

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