Episode Date: 05/09/26 Episode Number: 458

Episode Summary

This week on Home In Progress, Dan tackles one of the most dreaded things a homeowner can face — the smell of a dead animal somewhere in the house — and walks you through exactly how to find it, remove it, and get your home smelling normal again. Then he shifts to the practical side of Art Deco: how to bring that bold, geometric style into your own home without going overboard. And finally, Dan makes the case that paint finish is just as important a design decision as color — and shows you some surprisingly elegant tricks you can pull off with nothing more than a change in sheen.

In This Episode

• [01:46] — Dead Animal Smell: How to Find It, Remove It, and Prevent It
• [19:25] — Art Deco at Home: A Practical Guide
• [33:26] — Paint Finish as a Design Tool

Segments 1 & 2: Dead Animal Smell — Finding It, Removing It, and Preventing It [01:46]

Dan's son Caleb bought a house and discovered a smell that turned out to be a dead possum under the floor — frozen all winter, then very much not frozen come spring. Dan uses that story to kick off a practical, no-nonsense guide to dealing with dead animal odors in your home.

How bad will it be — and how long will it last? Size of the animal, temperature, humidity, and airflow all determine severity and duration. The rough timeline:

• Mouse: a few days to about a week
• Rat or squirrel: a couple of weeks
• Possum, raccoon, or larger: several weeks — potentially up to two months in a warm, damp, enclosed space

How to find the source:

• Use your nose. Walk slowly, close doors to isolate rooms, and track where the smell intensifies.
• Check near outlets, baseboards, vents, attic hatches, crawl space doors, and under stairs.
• Let your pets help — a dog or cat obsessively sniffing one spot is a clue worth following.
• Watch for blowflies. Large, metallic-looking flies congregating indoors often indicate a nearby carcass. Follow them.
• Note: the smell often seems to come from vents, but pest pros say the animal is almost never inside the ductwork — it's usually in a wall or attic space near a duct run. The HVAC is just moving the odor around.

Once you've found it — how to remove it safely:

• Wear gloves and a mask, especially in enclosed spaces.
• Get air moving before you start: open windows, run a fan.
• Do not sweep or vacuum rodent droppings — that stirs particles into the air and can spread disease. Instead, spray droppings with a disinfectant or a 1:10 bleach-and-water solution, let it soak 5–10 minutes, then wipe with paper towels and mop the area again.
• Double-bag the carcass and dispose of it per your local regulations.

What happens after removal depends on the surface:

• Hard, non-porous surfaces (concrete, metal, vinyl): Clean promptly, ventilate well, and the smell usually clears quickly.
• Porous materials (insulation, carpet pad, unfinished wood, drywall, ceiling tile): Decomposition fluids soak in and the smell can linger — or seem to come back on humid days — long after the animal is gone. In these cases, remove the contaminated material, clean with disinfectant, and then apply an enzymatic cleaner to break down any remaining organic residue at the molecular level. This is the step that eliminates the odor rather than masking it.

If you can't find or access the source: The intense phase will eventually pass on its own as the carcass dries out. While you wait:

• Activated charcoal bags — place them as close to the affected area as possible. They trap odor molecules physically rather than adding a scent. Recharge them in sunlight every couple of weeks. Available at most stores for around $10–15 for a multi-pack.
• Foaming enzymatic cleaners (like BAC-A-Zap) — drill a small hole into the wall cavity, inject the foam, and the enzymes go to work on organic material from the inside. Available online or through pest control suppliers.
• Use both together for best results — but be honest with yourself: if fluids have soaked into porous materials inside that wall, you may eventually need to open it up.

The final step — odor-blocking primer: Once the source is removed and the area is clean and dry, if you're still worried about lingering odor, you can seal hard surfaces with a shellac-based odor-blocking primer like BIN. Important: this is the last step — a lock on a problem already solved — not a first response.

Two things worth knowing:

1. Not every mystery smell is a dead animal. Propane and natural gas have a chemical odorant added to them that some people experience as a decay or skunk smell rather than the classic "rotten egg" description. If you can't find a source, the smell isn't fading, or it has a sharp chemical edge, leave the area and call your gas company.
2. The "poison makes them leave the house" idea is a myth. Rodent poisons do not cause mice or rats to go outside searching for water, and they don't dry out the body to eliminate odor. The rodent eats the bait, gets sick over several days, and dies wherever it happens to be — usually inside a wall, under insulation, or behind an appliance. This is one of the reasons pest professionals often recommend snap traps inside the home instead of poison: you know exactly where the animal is.

Prevention — sealing entry points:

• Inspect the exterior of your home for gaps and holes.
• For small openings: skip foam or caulk alone — rodents chew right through it. Pack the gap first with copper or stainless steel mesh, then seal over it with exterior-grade caulk or pest-blocking foam.
• For larger openings: use hardware cloth, metal flashing, or other chew-resistant materials.
• Check chimney caps, vent screens, damaged soffits, loose siding, and gaps around pipes and utility lines.
• Go into your garage, close the door, turn off the lights. If you can see daylight around the door frame big enough to fit a dime, that's a mouse entry point.

Segment 2: Art Deco at Home — A Practical Guide [19:25]

Last week Dan covered the history and origins of Art Deco. This week he makes it practical: how do you actually bring Art Deco into a real home without making the space feel like a 1920s movie set?

The good news: Art Deco translates surprisingly well into modern interiors — especially when you borrow selectively. You don't need to go all in. Borrowing a few core principles can give any room more elegance, confidence, and visual impact.

Three core ingredients of an Art Deco-inspired room:

1. Shape — Art Deco loves geometry, clear lines, and repeated patterns. Think: a mirror with a stepped frame, wallpaper with a fan or geometric motif, a rug with bold linear structure, a light fixture with globes and symmetry, a vanity with fluted details, or a cabinet with curved corners and brass pulls. It's a structured style — not casual.
2. Contrast — Art Deco works best when there's tension in the room: light against dark, gloss against matte, soft upholstery against hard metal, cream walls against black trim, jewel tones against warm metallic finishes.
3. Sheen — Art Deco has always had an affinity for surfaces that reflect light: lacquer, mirrored materials, polished metal, glass, smooth stone, sleek tile. Even if your paint color is quiet and reserved, bumping up the sheen can push a room toward an Art Deco feel without committing to bolder colors.

Color: Art Deco isn't just black and gold (though black, ivory, brass, and chrome is certainly one classic palette). The style also works with:

• Rich jewel tones: emerald green, sapphire blue, deep teal, burgundy, plum
• Softer palettes: blush pink, dusty rose, pale aqua, warm cream, smoky taupe, elegant gray

What matters most is that the color choices feel deliberate — polished and intentional, not random.

Two approaches to bringing Art Deco in with paint:

• Go dramatic: A deep green in a dining room, a rich navy in a bedroom, a charcoal in a powder room — especially when paired with brass lighting, crisp trim, and geometric accents.
• Go soft and elegant: Warm cream, pale blush, or a light gray-green on the walls, and let black accents, metallic fixtures, and geometric shapes carry the Art Deco energy. This is often the smarter route — the paint creates the atmosphere and the accessories do the style work.

The golden rule: make a statement, not ten statements. Art Deco becomes overwhelming when every element is competing for attention. Let one or two things speak.

Best rooms to try it:

• Powder rooms — small, high-impact, and a great place to experiment with darker, glossier choices. A jewel-toned wall, brass sconce, bold mirror, black vanity, and geometric tile can be a knockout.
• Entryways — Art Deco is great at first impressions. A strong console, a sunburst mirror, and a crisp wall color can make an entrance feel intentional and elegant.
• Dining rooms — Art Deco has natural ties to entertaining, which fits the dining room perfectly. Great for a room you want to feel more special and elevated.
• Bedrooms — especially with upholstered shapes, symmetry, and softer Art Deco palettes (dusty rose, muted green, warm ivory).

Three questions to ask yourself before you start:

• Do I want this room to feel dramatic or elegant?Dramatic: lean darker and richer — deep greens, navy, charcoal, black accents, metallic finishes. Let the room have weight.
• Elegant: lean lighter and softer — cream, pale blush, taupe, muted blue-green, soft gray. Let the accessories do the style work.

1. Where is the geometry going to come from? Pick one or two sources — wallpaper, a mirror, a light fixture, tile, a rug. Not every surface. Intentional pattern reads as Art Deco. Pattern everywhere reads as chaos.
2. Where is the shine going to come from? Brass? Chrome? Glass? A satin or semi-gloss finish on the walls? A glossy vanity? Mirrored furniture? Choose strategically. A little shine goes a long way — too much and the room starts to feel like a hotel lobby.

Segment 3: Paint Finish as a Design Tool [33:26]

We talk a lot about color. But the finish — the sheen — is a design decision that gets far too little attention, and it can be just as powerful.

The core idea: The same color can feel completely different depending on the finish.

• Flat/matte: absorbs light, reads deeper and softer, hides imperfections — which is why it's standard on ceilings
• Eggshell: clean and practical
• Satin: polished and slightly reflective
• Semi-gloss/high-gloss: dramatic and light-bouncing — but will show every flaw

Sheen plays two roles: durability and hiding imperfections (the practical role most people think about) — and a design role that most people never consider.

Four finish tricks worth trying:

1. Same color, stepped-up sheen on the trim. Paint walls and trim the exact same color, but go one or two sheens higher on the trim. Matte walls, satin trim. Eggshell walls, semi-gloss trim. The architecture quietly emerges — the trim catches more light, the room feels more considered and custom — without changing the color at all.
2. Use sheen to control where the eye goes. Keep walls soft and quiet (matte or eggshell), then let a satin bookcase, a painted door, or a glossy piece of furniture become the feature. Same color throughout, but the finish tells your eye where to look.
3. The jewel box powder room. Take a small room, paint it a deep saturated color (emerald, navy, burgundy), and use semi-gloss or high gloss on every surface. Light bounces off everything. The color stops being color and starts feeling like a material. You walk in and feel like you stepped into something.
4. The glossy ceiling. One of the great underused tricks in design. Paint a ceiling in a high-sheen finish — even just white — and it reflects the room back at itself, making a low ceiling feel taller and a small space feel bigger. Designers use this in dining rooms, entryways, powder rooms, and small studies regularly.

A word of caution on glossy ceilings: this is one of the hardest paint jobs in a house to pull off. A ceiling gets raking light from windows and overhead fixtures, and gloss will broadcast every drywall seam, tape joint, screw pop, roller mark, and brush stroke. Most residential drywall isn't finished to the standard that gloss demands — you'd need skim coating, sanding, priming, and sanding again before the finish coat. If you want to experiment, try a satin sheen first. And if you go full gloss, hire someone who has done it before — and ask to see photos.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Nature's Miracle — enzymatic cleaner for odor elimination (available at pet stores)
• BAC-A-Zap — foaming enzymatic cleaner for wall voids and enclosed spaces (available online and through pest control suppliers)
• BIN Shellac-Based Primer — odor-blocking primer, the strongest option for sealing surfaces after odor remediation
• Activated Charcoal Bags — available widely, ~$10–15 for a multi-pack; recharge in sunlight every few weeks
• Copper or Stainless Steel Mesh — for packing gaps before sealing with caulk or pest-blocking foam

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