Ozium has good reviews. Try that.

You need to wash the walls and ceilings with TSP first. We bought a house from a smoker and before the painters came I hired a cleaner who did nothing but clean the walls and ceilings for three days. Wear gloves because TSP can bother sensitive skin. You need to get the nicotine off the walls. It helped immensely. KILZ is oil based and stinky. If you use it you will need to vacate your house.

Isn't there an absorbent paint? I believe there is. Someone may have introduced it to me when I was doing my son's room. It would absorb all sorts of baby smells. It might work for cigs as well.

Call a paint shop, like Duron or something. They can tell you what's on offer.

Use shellac based primer like BIN

A realtor once told me that brewing coffee gets rid of cigarette odor. Not sure if it's true, but would be an easy thing to try! And, I bet reprinting will help a lot, as well as replacing carpeting and window treatments.

OP here. Thanks for the ideas, everyone!

We did only notice the smell in the past month or so, when the weather warmed up.

The previous owners had removed all of the carpeting throughout the house, so we now have hardwood everywhere. There were no light fixtures, and I'm about to remove one son's blinds (I need to finish making his curtains). The other son's blinds are gone.

Those are #1 and #2 of PP's suggestions.

We'll try to paint those rooms sooner rather than later and use Kilz.

If we can still smell it, I'll call one of those companies suggested earlier.

Any other suggestions are welcome. Thanks again.

If you haven't done so already, here are steps you can take on your own to eliminate the smell.

Get rid of all window treatments, drapes, curtains
Get rid of any carpet or rugs, including padding, as these hold onto the odors.
Repaint, using Kilz or similar primer.

Jesus Christ. http://www.chesapeakecrimecleaners.com

There are companies that clean out houses specifically after violent murders are committed with lots of blood and gore and also hellacious hoarding. Google it. Cleaning out cigarette smoke should be a cake walk for them.

My mom used a company similar to ServPro (it was in Canada, so I don't know the name of the company) to remove the smell of cat pee from a house that she purchased. The lady was a pet hoarder and had approx. 25 cats that peed all over the house. She got the house for a song since no one wanted to deal with the smell and the mess.

The company came in and treated the house for a one-time fee. Then they guaranteed that the smell wouldn't return. She had them back twice to retreat once the weather warmed up and the smell became noticeable again. It worked. So I am sure that you can get rid of cigarette smell, too.

After renting out the house for a few years, she sold it at a huge profit.

Ugh, that is my worst nightmare. so sorry you have this issue. I think it's going to be very hard to get rid of the smell entirely. I don't have any suggestions. Good luck.

My parents bought the home of heavy smokers ~10 years ago. It's really hard to get rid of the smell. KILZ primer helped but it was also lingering on the light fixtures and in the vents. I would imagine that the whole house might be smoky but you only notice it in certain places or maybe the previous owners and guests that smoked only in those rooms.

We moved into our house a few months ago, and we finally realized that the stinky smell that we can only smell in our sons' rooms at night (while checking up on our kids) must be from cigarettes. Not theirs; they're only 2 and 9. The previous owner died before we bought the house (his son sold it to us), and the son is an only child and is now in his 60's, so I'm not sure who was smoking in the kids' bedrooms (they're down the hall from the master bedroom, which is right near the stairs).

Anyway, how can we get rid of the smell? We will eventually paint, and I'm thinking we might want to use KILZ as our primer. Anything else we can do?

TIA!