WHAT is that smell???

For the past couple of days, our den has smelled more and more like pee. With five kids, two cats, and two dogs living in the house, I suppose it is possible that there could have been pee in there. The question was WHERE is it?


I started by spritzing the carpet with some pet odor stuff. That only worked for a little while. The odor was just getting stronger and stronger by the day. Today I decided that I was going to take the bull by the horns and do something drastic about the smell. It was making me crazy. I vacumed, steam cleaned the carpets, moved the furniture, scrubbed all the baseboards and walls in the house, and cleaned the fronts of all of my appliances. STILL, the odor was there.


I was just about ready to fully remove the carpet from the den and simply live with just the concrete. In a last ditch effort, I got on my hands and knees and tried following the smell. Again. It seemed to be over by the television wall. Since I was on the floor with a bucket and rag, I figured I should also scrub the fireplace. It was looking particularly yucky anyway.


That's when I found out what the real issue was. THE FIREPLACE! Someone has been peeing in the freaking fire place. At what point does a child (or more likely a pet) think it would be a great idea to pee in the fireplace?!?!?! I scrubbed, bleached, scrubbed some more and finally scrubbed on last time. At last the smell was gone.


All that blood, sweat, and tears and the answer was there the whole time. Oh well. At least I have some real deep cleaning done now. That'll probably be it for a long time to come, too. I hate deep cleaning stuff like that.