If there is one thing that drives me homocidal its got to be stale tobacco smoke. Even though the previous owner didn't smoke, her mother did and despite assurances to the contrary its obvious the whole place was covered in a layer of nicotine goo. We've spend countless hours scrubbing, cleaning, etc to get rid, and its made a difference everywhere apart from one room.
What was originally going to be the spare bedroom, kept smelling like a pub carpet despite our efforts in cleaning. Then one day the penny dropped. The next door neighbour was in his back garden smoking the most god awful cigars. Think of 5 day old road killed skunk in the hot sun, being set on fire, and you would be close. Its his damn cigars that have been wafting into the room. A bit of research has found this isn't an uncommon problem in older houses where fireplaces and chimney breasts have been removed. In this case both the fireplace on our side and theirs had been removed. The smoke was leaking through the party wall as the contractor hadn't properly sealed the wall after removing the brickwork. The other problem we discovered was the smell had permiated all the clothes in the built in wardrobes along that wall. That means finding a new place to store most of our clothing.
So, the room we had originally put way down the list for renovation is now getting top billing. There are a lot of parts to the work that's been done so far. Rather than bore you to death with one big post, I'll stretch out the tedium.
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