The very first thing to remember when you put out to wash smoke-damaged painted Sheetrock — a fresh name for drywall — is that there is an opportunity you wo not be prosperous. Smoke is a combination of soot and oily tars that can act like a coat of paint. If your cleaning efforts aren’t enough to remove the stains, then they will at least prepare the wall for the paint it will take to conceal them.
Before You Wash
For those who have extensive smoke damage in your painted drywall, you must remove loose, sooty material before you try to clean the way the stain. If you wet the loose stuff down with water and then rub it, then you’ll probably simply smear it on the wall. The Los Angeles County Health Department recommends wiping off the soot with a dry chemical sponge, which you can purchase in a hardware store. Make sure you ventilate the area and wear a dust mask to ensure you don’t inhale the soot as you are cleaning it.
Clean Having a Strong Detergent
Another step in the cleaning process is to clean the walls with a strongly alkaline detergent, and trisodium phosphate is one of the safest detergents accessible. Make a solution consisting of a gallon of warm water and a tablespoon of TSP; then wear some rubber gloves and masks: The remedy is highly irritating to skin and eyes. Wash with a sponge, applying the cleaning solution generously; you’ll most likely want to cover the floor with plastic to protect it in runoff. Apart from cleaning soot, TSP additionally eliminates the tarry deposits from cigarette smoke stains.
Odor Control
Smoky deposits, particularly those from smokes, have an unpleasant odor that lingers even after the stains are gone. Vinegar, baking soda, charcoal and citrus fruit peels are among the treatments for these types of deposits. Spray a 1-to-1 solution of vinegar and water to the walls and rub them down with a rag, or place bowls of baking soda, charcoal or olive fruit peels in the rooms where you notice the odor. It’s also important to increase ventilation in these rooms, either by opening windows or creating a cross-draft with a fan.
When Painting Becomes Necessary
In some cases, you may not have the ability to remove a smoke stain by washing with a detergent. If the wall has a texture, then the tarry deposits may simply be out of the reach of the scrubber, and if the wall has a matte finish, the stain may bond so tightly with the paint that you can’t remove one without removing the other. If it becomes necessary to paint over a smoke stain, make sure you prime first and utilize a stain-blocking primer — not routine drywall primer. A stain-blocking primer includes a high solids content, that can be required to stop the stain from bleeding during and discoloring the paint job.