thapranksta

Here's the situation. The previous owner of my home had a cat that used various rooms in my upstairs as a litter box. There are various walls soiled with cat urine. The corners are particularly bad, so bad that as I attempted to cut the drywall out the wall just crumbled away. I thought that maybe just removing and replacing the drywall would suffice but it became apparent that the urine had soaked into the bottom of the studs in some of the corners. And the board that the studs sit on top of (is this called a sole plate?) also has some urine soaked in. The urine didn't appear to have soaked too far into the boards. There is also insulation that will need to be replaced in these corners.

As it stands now, I have cut 4 feet of drywall from the bottom of the wall. My questions are - do the entire bottom sections of these corner studs need complete replacement and if so, would I be better off calling up a professional? Could I get away with sanding away an 1/8'' to a 1/4'' (estimated deepness of cat urine) of the studs and sole plate without compromising the structural integrity?

Thanks.

nealtw

There are lots of products that claim to get rid of the smell, I don't know about them. When we have repaired houses after a fire they spay the structure with some kind of primer to get rid of the smell. Grinding away 1/4" wouldn't be to bad and if you took off to much you could scab on new 4 ft pieces of stud to regain strength. Replacing the whole stud isn't hard if you do one at a time but changing corner studs is a little more of a problem.

thapranksta

I've read about these products too and most of them seem to only mask the odor or give temporary relief from the things I've read. We even bought the expensive stuff from PetSmart called Urine B'Gone or something like that. While it worked in the bathroom, it didn't work in the places where the cat went repeatedly. We had even tried vinegar, baking soda, peroxide, and the Kilz primer spray cans. The smell didn't really budge. Cat urine is potent stuff. lol. I'm going to read up a little on "scabbing".