We got lucky and both renters moved out April 1, so we had about 2 weeks to clean and paint, which has made a HUGE HUGE difference. The pictures below were taken after both tenants had moved out and the place was empty, as we just started painting. The big thing which cannot be expressed by these photos is the incredible SMELL of the first level. The former tenants smoked heavily. Here's how we got rid of the smoke smell.
Smoke removal for walls and rooms with heavy smokers
-Wash all rooms where heavy smoking occurred repeatedly with TSP
-Wash all rooms repeatedly with a product from Odor Matic, a local Twin Cities company, which did wonders and actually leached the nicotine out of the walls.
-Repeat. Some rooms got washed 8-9 times. Wash until the wall stop oozing nasty nicotine. Yuck!
-Primed the walls, ceilings, and all all woodwork with a product called BIN. This is a product similar to Killz but works better for woodwork and for smoke.
-Repeat
-Painted 2 coats with regular paint (we have had good luck with Behr paint.)
So, um, that was a lot of work. My job was to write the checks, as I was lucky that the guys on Chad's landscaping crew were willing to do this dirty work. I loved the feeling of sitting at work while all the nasty crap got done on the house. I think we've already done more on this house than has been done in the last 50 years.
We already have a good before and after shot just from the tenants moving out:
Before:
After:
