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Well you've all given me some excellent insight and helped me convince my wife that wainscoting and crown molding is above my expertise. So I am hoping you can weigh in on this too.
If all goes smoothly and we close on this house on time we will have a few weeks of overlap between our rental ending after we sign papers on the new house. We are thrilled as that gives us time to paint or do other small projects without needing to rush to move in right away.
I will preface this by saying the homeowner is a smoker. This is an excellent house and in our price range beggars cannot be choosers. We also did not let this deter us as we have lived many places without knowing if the homeowner/renter before us was a smoker, so we weren't going to pass up a great deal.
So, back to my question. Knowing the homeowner was a smoker we plan on cleaning all surfaces. We want to paint the walls with kilz odor remover. We can't notice a smell but just to be on the safe side. We then want to go through each room and paint. However the baseboards are a stained wood. So are the doors. It would be more work to have to sand and paint those. My wife hates the stained wood look and wants white. I could care less either way. Wife says that since homeowner is a smoker it would be best to paint over all surfaces. Do you agree?
If we paint just the baseboards, would it look odd to leave the doors stained wood? I don't mind doing the work but it will be tedious and I'm not sure I want to cover up all that wood because to me it looks nice but wife does make a good point with former owner being a smoker.
Are you talking "Stained wood" like the brown from the 70's and 80's? Or actual nice wood that has been stained for a newer home? If it's actual nice stained doors, you might look at just putting a sealant clear coat to seal any smells. If you're talking about those old, ugly doors in older homes, paint them white with the trim a contrasting white. If you use a primer first, you won't need as many coats of paint, but if you don't, you'll need a good 2-3 coats to hide the brown.
Maybe you covered this in another post, but if it's an old house, with lots of unpainted woodwork, (pre-1940s, usually) painted woodwork might turn off future buyers.
Anyway, the previous tenant in my house was a heavy smoker, and the formerly white walls were horribly yellowed. I used a "liquid TSP substitute cleaner" to clean all surfaces, and the stains washed right off. (I was painting the walls anyway, but I had no intention of painting the woodwork.)
It's nice wood that's stained but it doesn't go with the feel of the house... Wood trim looks "country" but my wife has more transitional, contemporary style.
Would primer and paint be "enough" to protect from 3rd hand smoke? After cleansing, of course. Is the Kilz necessary?
Paint is the absolute best bang for your buck that you can get. It is really day and night what a good coat of paint can do for a place. Definitely go for quality - nice quality paint will really hold up, and be easier to keep clean and nice looking. After trying many, I've become a big fan of Benjamin Moore.
If you don't notice an odor, you probably don't need to worry about special primer. Just give the walls a good wash, prime and paint. However, it also can't hurt, and primer definitely makes a paint job look better so why not use it.
White woodwork is just such a clean, nice look - there's lots of cheap, crappy-looking stained woodwork out there (although, there's some gorgeous quality stuff too, you just don't run into it as much). However, some stain is really hard to paint over. The paint will go on nice, and then when it dries it will look cracked and awful, so try a spot in an unnoticeable place first and let it sit overnight. Non-matching doors and trim usually do look kinda funny, so if you go for one, it's probably best to do both. Get the smooth roller that's specifically for doors - it'll make the job much faster and you won't have roller marks or brush marks.
Since you seem to be looking to do a few projects before you move in - I'll also note that new door hardware, in addition to fresh paint, can really spruce a place up. Unless you have a lot of doors, a few handles are usually pretty cheap, and not hard to switch out. Another small change that makes a bigger difference than you'd think is updating old, grungy outlets, switches and covers with nicer, modern ones.
It's nice wood that's stained but it doesn't go with the feel of the house... Wood trim looks "country" but my wife has more transitional, contemporary style.
Would primer and paint be "enough" to protect from 3rd hand smoke? After cleansing, of course. Is the Kilz necessary?
After using the TSP substitute, I did prime the walls with Kilz. But I'm not sure it would have been necessary. I just went "belt and suspenders" since I already had the Kilz.
I have wood doors with white trim, but they are really nice wood doors. If you are talking about painting over wood from the 1800's because you don't like wood trim, then don't paint it. If you are talking about some spruce, fir, pine trim, go for it and paint it white. It just depends. Wood doors with white trim that look good.
If you have veneer doors, like the 1970's kind or just no panel flat doors, then I'd paint them white.
You can paint over stained doors and woodwork. It's easy. Just do a fine sanding, use a good ADHERENT primer (Kilz is not adherent in my experience - and, oil based is best for this), and use eggshell or velvet NOT SEMIGLOSS white. Make sure you are willing and able to toss any carpeting because that's what cigarette smoke really adheres to and produces the odor.
Be sure to clean all the walls with ammonia or similar before painting. Smoking leaves a sticky residue that won't take well to paint.
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