Welcome to Clean Freak Confessions, a celebration for sharing personal cleaning experiences and tips from leading bloggers. Join the conversation and share your thoughts with us!
When we bought our current house, one of the features I was most excited about was the fireplace. I’ve never had a fireplace! I want a fireplace! Look, this house has a fireplace! Sold! Who cares about the weird suspicious burning smell from the wall outlets! FIREPLACE!
And I still love our fireplace. We use it almost every night in late fall through winter. I love the warm, crackly, festive glow, the look of our dog’s belly as she stretches out over the hearth, the flicker of flame reflected in a wine glass, the fact that there’s just something about a fire that makes everybody in our house extra cuddly.
And yet, I hate our fireplace, or at least the look of it. It’s fitted with white and grey marble – a dumb choice, really, because marble? In a little suburban townhouse? Why not install a ton of marble columns while you’re at it? But also, white! Soot! Staining! Hideousness.
I remember staring critically at the soot stains before we officially bought the house, and was quickly assured by the realtor that “oh, you can buy marble refinishing kits for that! It’ll come right off!” When we moved in, we found a marble refinishing kit in the basement – used. It did nothing. I tried every kind of cleanser I could think of. We had the chimney swept and asked the guy if he had any advice. He stared at it for awhile and said maybe we could buy a marble refinishing kit for that.
We resigned ourselves to living with the ugly stains, since re-facing the fireplace falls PRETTY LOW on our endless house-related to-do list. And then, randomly, after searching for a way to remove Manic Panic hair dye from granite countertops (don’t ask), I stumbled on a possible solution: paper towels, soaked in a combination of water and hydrogen peroxide, covered with plastic wrap and taped over the stains, left on for 24 to 48 hours.
First, clean off as much dirt and surface residue as possible. Lightly dampen a slew of paper towels with water, then use a generous amount of hydrogen peroxide to get them nice and soaking. For the hearth, just lay them down wherever you see stains, cover with plastic wrap and tape the edges down – it doesn’t have to be perfect, just seal it up well enough to keep the towels from drying out too quickly.
Treating the top of the fireplace is a pain in the ass, I admit – it’s hard to tape the plastic down to the sooty inside brick, but I’ve found that the secret is just a LOT of TAPE, and that duct or packing tape stick to less-than-pristine surfaces better than other kinds.
Shut up! It’s not a nose job! I had a DEVIATED SEPTUM!
Since I am bumping up against the upper word limit on my entries here, and also because I enjoy being SUPER EXTRA ANNOYING, I’m going to wait until next week to unveil the before-and-after photos. Did it work? Just how gross was my fireplace, anyway? All this! And more! Okay, probably not any more than that.
The blog owner requires users to be logged in to be able to vote for this post.
Alternatively, if you do not have an account yet you can create one here.
Powered by Vote It Up
I’m going to try this.
My dirty fireplace MOCKS me whenever I walk by.
With so much granite out there - what a great tip! Can’t wait to see the before and after photos.
This is a terrific tip- I hate cleaning my fireplace and always make my husband do it, ha!
Will definitely try this, thanks!
Oh oh I can’t wait to see how it goes … DID IT WORK? DID IT WORK? I hope so … although I have no fireplace, and no marble in my small suburban home. (Honestly, said by the appraiser last weekend when we were trying to refinance: “Oh, you don’t buy these old homes for the house, you buy it for the property.” I kind of muttered, “WE LIKE OUR HOUSE.” But then let it go … she still appraised it too low, jerk. Oh, we were talking about fireplaces? Sorry.
Thanks for the suspense - someone just told me today that hydrogen peroxide cleans poo and pee out of carpet, in case your small one scoots away during the diaper change and mistakes the carpet for a fresh diaper. Aaaannneeeeeways, I love vinegar and baking soda.. and Mr Eraser.. cleans everything! LOL! Can’t wait to see the before-n-after!
“Shut up! It’s not a nose job! I had a DEVIATED SEPTUM!”
*snort* Someone needs to tell Michael Jackson to try layering some SARAN WRAP over that piece of packaging tape he’s currently using.
Any advice on how to clean away the tacky brass from my fireplace?
Seriously though, I love hydrogen peroxide. I use it to get cat puke stains out of my light carpet.
Mmmmm … we’ve been in our house for 3.5 years now and I have yet to even OPEN the fireplace doors (on either fireplace, for lo, we have two!) because the soot is mighty. And, yeah. Low on the list. But perhaps you will inspire me.
Now, if you could tell me how to once and for-damn-all get the dog urine smell out of a rug and hardwood floor…
It doesn’t do much for the soot on the sides, but my mom came up with the idea of putting a disposable type aluminum roasting pan underneath the fire grate to catch all the ash. It makes cleaning up post fire very simple, just take the pan outside and dump it into a bag.
I am definitely interested to see how this comes out as we have a similar issue with our fireplace. Though we have yet to use ours and we need to have it cleaned still. Out of curiosity how did you find your chimney sweep person?
Anticipation. I haz it.
I want a fireplace. It’s totally on my list for Additional House Renovation. Although, after this entry, I think I will forgo fancy-schmancy marble.
I could replace every “fireplace” in your first paragraph with “gas fireplace!!!!!” in reference to the house we moved to last year. We left DC and took up residence in Florida (yes, it still gets cool enough here in northern FL to need a GAS FIREPLACE!)
Best part: no soot required.