Help ????? smoke damage to quilts and fabric
 

DH left a pot of beef boiling on the stove and left the house. When he returned smoke had filled the whole house--luckily --no fire. My quilt area is next to the kitchen area. The restoration company wants to just wash my quilts-- no way. I have antique ones, one on the design wall, others cut out and lying vulnerable to that awful smoke, plus lots of fabric piled around the room. I am not forgetting the thread. Please help me with your brain-trust wisdom to assist my clean up. Thank you in advance for any suggestions.:(

My daughter worked for a restoration company and she said they had a room that had a machine in it and they put smoky smelling things in there and ran the machine. When it was done, the things no longer smelled. I'm not sure what the machine was or if every restoration co. has one, but she said it worked. You can ask if your co has one and then request they use it.

Thank you for the suggestions

I read that it was ozone- but it states that it deteriorate and brittlizes fabrics and textiles----but gets rid of the smell????? Thank you.

I would put my own pan on the stove and fill with vinegar, shut the door and leave! Honestly, I have used the vinegar steam method to get rid of cigarette smell and many others. Good luck!

The machine to use is an ozone generator. They are available as air cleaners, but not recommended by some because ozone is also a pollutant. I bought one for my inlaws when they quit smoking, and it cleaned out the smoke stench in their house in 3 days. But for a smoker's house, you have to keep it running because the smoke continues to come out of fabrics for a long time. There are also the ozone cleaners that hotels use that will clean out the smoke in a room in 30 minutes (if someone smoked in a non-smoking room).

Look up air cleaners. There are 3 types: HEPA filters which require new filters frequently; electrostatic precipitators which have filters that can be washed in a dish washer (and produce some ozone); and ozone generators, which have plates that have to be cleaned periodically. For the ozone generators, you want to control the amount of ozone produced to be just enough to clean the smell, without smelling the ozone.

I hadn't heard anything about ozone harming the fabrics.

I am currently working with a cleaning/restoration company after a fire in a 4 apartment condo bulding. They have been using a huge machine they call an air scrubber to mitigate the mold and smoke from the building. You can trust these people. They would not be in business if they ruined people's stuff.