A Mystery Smell No Longer!

The whole point of the half bathroom remodel was to rid that room of a terrible urine stench that we could not eradicate through less drastic means. We had tried EVERYTHING we could think of and yet the smell remained, so in our minds, the only fix was to rip out all the floors, radiator and the lower portion of the walls, paint the walls and floor joists with BIN and hope for the best.

Well after doing all this and installing the new hardwood floors we felt confident the project was a success. Not only would we have a beautiful new bathroom, but we would have accomplished our primary goal of eliminating the smell for good.

It didn't take long before we realized that though the smell was almost undetectable, it was still there. While sitting up close to the wall while installing the bead board, I caught a whiff and knew we had a problem. Eric and I couldn't imagine what else we could even do to fix it after removing the floors, sub floors, parts of the walls AND sealing the entire room. What could the source of the smell be? Where was it coming from?

I sniffed the whole room and finally found a place where the smell was the strongest. It was right by a hole in the wall that was left for the plumbing. At first I was sure it was the pipes that smelled, but Eric noticed that there was old fiberglass insulation surrounding that area in the wall. When removed we realized that IT WAS THE INSULATION THAT SMELLED! There had been some in between layers in the sub floor and it was in behind the walls on one side of the bathroom - the side that smelled.

We really couldn't believe that the insulation had been causing the problem all along. Since when does insulation smell like urine? We googled it and interestingly enough, this problem is more common than one might think! Here is just one of the many examples that we came across:
http://www.ytmag.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=toolt&th=216180

After ripping it all out the smell is finally gone! But I am still in disbelief over the cause.