Bad Odours...Second Hand Furniture
This post is all about my new futon. WE were so excited to find this $500 futon for $50 the other day and a lovely lady sold it to us. Our cousins helped us out with their huge truck (I've never been inside a truck that big) and well we got our prize back to our little home. It fitted, without it's beige coverslip the blue and white striped foam matress cover looked really cute, very Swedinh and nautical too. I've been hankering after something IKEA since I came to California partly because of my Europe nostalgia and partly becasue we live in a very traditional slightly dated town that still has the heavy dark wood furniture and mushroom coloured carpets and walls everywhere. I wanted something modern, clean lined. Something that had metal in it to set it off against our lovely vaulted wooden ceiling. Something a little modern. Primarily we wanted a sofa that could become a guest bed when needed.
So we now own a futon, it's in great shape. The only discomforting thing is that it had a strange odor. My husband explained that the previous owners were smokers, tobacco and pot(the downside to California state- everyone and everything smells of p.o.t) although it may have been from the chemical smell of the foam collecting over time. Either way it had an odor. I set to work on locating it's source and stripped off all the many layers to get down to the foam itself. Yes the matress foam smelt! The stripey matress cover smelt too!
Funnily enough we had just run out of washing detergent and so had our local store that sells it so impatient to get a start on cleaning I made up some of my own washing detergent and also set about getting the foam cleaned.
After stripping off all the linens I bagged them with a 1/4 cup of regular baking soda. I then left them over night. The foam pieces I arranged with dished of coffee granules and cups of white vinegar placed nearby to absorb any fumes or odors that might try and pollute my home and make it smell weird. (*This is a great way of getting smells out of a cars or closets too).
The following day I got up early and mixed 1/4 a bar of grated Dr. Bronners Peppermint Castile soap and a cup of baking soada together. Our machines don't take powder detergent so I added the watery remains of our detergent to the machine with this mix and a 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar to the rinse cylce. Some of the linens I dried in the sun and some I dried in the dryer and then aired out in the sunshine.
The foam pieces were going to take a bit more drastic intervention. I found some Arm and Hammer baking soda pet odour mix that said it pulled out smoke from upholstry and capets. So $3.49 later I sprinkled each side of the foam for 15 minutes with this strong smelling stuff, well ventilated, wearing a mask and gloves ( although the instructions didn't suggest those things). I then hoovered up the baking soda mix and although I didn't feel like pressing my face into the foam to smell it, there smell of the smoke had definately been replaced (and hopefully removed) by a floral, laundry softner kind of smell, which will hopefully also fade a little. I left them out in the sunshine to air out!
I'll post a pic of the futon all put back together soon!
So we now own a futon, it's in great shape. The only discomforting thing is that it had a strange odor. My husband explained that the previous owners were smokers, tobacco and pot(the downside to California state- everyone and everything smells of p.o.t) although it may have been from the chemical smell of the foam collecting over time. Either way it had an odor. I set to work on locating it's source and stripped off all the many layers to get down to the foam itself. Yes the matress foam smelt! The stripey matress cover smelt too!
Funnily enough we had just run out of washing detergent and so had our local store that sells it so impatient to get a start on cleaning I made up some of my own washing detergent and also set about getting the foam cleaned.
After stripping off all the linens I bagged them with a 1/4 cup of regular baking soda. I then left them over night. The foam pieces I arranged with dished of coffee granules and cups of white vinegar placed nearby to absorb any fumes or odors that might try and pollute my home and make it smell weird. (*This is a great way of getting smells out of a cars or closets too).
 |
| A 1/2 filled cup of vinegar . I popped a few more holes in the lid. |
The following day I got up early and mixed 1/4 a bar of grated Dr. Bronners Peppermint Castile soap and a cup of baking soada together. Our machines don't take powder detergent so I added the watery remains of our detergent to the machine with this mix and a 1/4 cup of distilled white vinegar to the rinse cylce. Some of the linens I dried in the sun and some I dried in the dryer and then aired out in the sunshine.
The foam pieces were going to take a bit more drastic intervention. I found some Arm and Hammer baking soda pet odour mix that said it pulled out smoke from upholstry and capets. So $3.49 later I sprinkled each side of the foam for 15 minutes with this strong smelling stuff, well ventilated, wearing a mask and gloves ( although the instructions didn't suggest those things). I then hoovered up the baking soda mix and although I didn't feel like pressing my face into the foam to smell it, there smell of the smoke had definately been replaced (and hopefully removed) by a floral, laundry softner kind of smell, which will hopefully also fade a little. I left them out in the sunshine to air out!
I'll post a pic of the futon all put back together soon!
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