Cleaning old pet stains off hardwood floors.

A friend of mine just inherited a beautiful old home. The problem is, the previous owner had many, many dogs. They never went outside and made a mess all over the beautiful, old, hardwood floors.

My question is...how do you safely clean pet feces off an old hardwood floor without having to replace it???

My friend doesn't have a lot of money to put into this house and wants to clean it up by himself and sell it. Help!

Another quick question...how do you get the "pet" smell out of the house???

 

You have a real problem. The feces will come off when you sand the floor. The bigger problem is that you probably have urine stains. They will not come out. The wood has probably been permanently stained. If you have cleaned the surface well, and the smell still remains, go to a pet store and get some odor eliminator. It will decrease the smell, but if urine soaked into the wood, the only way to really get rid of the stains and smell is to pull it up. Sometimes you can seal the smell in and lay another floor, but it depends on how bad things are.

 

I don't know what to use to clean the pet feces and urine stains off the wood floors. What techniques do I use, what products, etc. I don't know anything!

 

Scrape as much up dry as possible with a 6 inch drywall knife, then use a minimum of water and a scrub brush. 409 and Fantastik type products will help some, but test in a corner first. The finish is probably shot, so I would not worry much about that. Just avoid soaking the floor with any more water than you need to. If you end up tearing it out or covering it up it will not matter as much, but you will have to let it dry before doing anything else. The odor killers from the pet store will help with the smell. Io have been in 2 houses with problems like this from renters, and I do know how it can smell. Vicks under your nose can help cover some of it, if you can stand the smell of Vicks.

 

If the floor isn't stained very badly, and probably it is, after it is sanded you will be able to tell if the stains arer bad. If they are not to bad, a couple of coats of polyurethane will actually seal the smell into the floor and you won't smell it again. Hope this helps.