# Smoke Damage:Must Walls be torn out or will Clean / Repaint Work?



## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

If you are certain there is no fire or heat damage going on to things inside the walls and celings, you could bring in one of the companies that does smoke damage restoration to clean it all up. There are great alkyd sealing primers for such applications as well and you will not notice the smoke smell after everything is done, primed and painted. 

It looks like the house is of a vintage where it is in need of some infrastructure assistance anyhow though and you will probably be better off letting them yank off walls and ceilings, checking and fixing anything in the walls that is old or was damaged in the fire, etc. You can also bring the insulation up to standard with everything out of the way. Personally I would go with the rebuild if the insurance money is there. You would probably have to disclose the repairs you made---or didn't---after such a fire in any future sales transaction. 

Before you decide, you might want to make sure you could get the house insured again if you don't do the suggested rebuild.


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