Your Life - @Home

Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009

Remove grease, oil stains from wood floor

My brother tracked in, on his work shoes, grease and oil from an auto repair shop.

I have old, worn hardwood floors from when I purchased the house and haven’t been able to redo them yet. The grease has made dark black patches on the parlor floor, right in the center of the room where you can see the ugly stains as soon as you walk in the front door.

I have put throw rugs over the black stains but I really want to get the grease and oil out of the wood. How can I do that?

This is what the National Wood Flooring Association recommends:

First rub the area with kitchen soap that has a high lye content, or saturate cotton with hydrogen peroxide and place over the stain.

Then, saturate a second layer of cotton with ammonia and place it over the first layer. Repeat until stain is removed. Let the area dry and then hand buff.

My kitchen stove has severe scratches on the top, under the black pot grids. The stove is almond in color. We have purchased numerous paints that were sold for stoves. When we paint the scratched surface it looks great, but as soon as you use the heat to cook, the paint turns brown and looks really ugly.

We cannot afford to buy a new stove and wonder if you have any suggestions.

I assume it turned brown because the paints you used were not of the high-heat porcelain enamel variety, even though what you bought might be recommended for stoves.

Magic Chef is now owned by Whirlpool. You might contact Whirlpool customer service, www.whirlpool.com or 1-866-698-2538, on the chance a representative might be able to recommend something suitable for your stove.