Late last night, to the horror of my eyes, I discovered that our beautiful new kitchen granite countertop had somehow become stained in multiple areas with what appeared to be some form of red color!
It took me a few minutes to calm down, but I realized that the previous day we had strawberry dessert with our dinner. Somehow the darn mess must have eluded my wife and I once we cleaned up and went to bed. So, there, in front of my eyes, roughly 24 hours later stood this bright red cluster of red spots sunken into our beautiful new kitchen counter, hideously laughing at me as I attempted all I knew trying to clean the redness away.
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, we attempted to use managed to even budge the stain away. The professional granite cleaner, soap and water, and hardcore rubbing of the sponge or towel. NADDA. Hell, I even SPIT on the damn stain. YUCK! (yeah, that didn't work either)
After about 20 minutes of head pounding frustration I thought of only one possibility, GOOGLE. I went ballistic online searching for tips on cleaning granite, specifically stains related to wine or fruit.
What I found was astounding, and it worked like a CHAMP!!
What could this miracle cleaning cure be you ask????
PLASTER OF PARIS (molding plaster) and BLEACH
THAT"S IT!!! Simply mix a little bit of the Plaster of Paris, available at any hardware store, with a little bit of bleach until you get a good paste. You don't want the paste too watery and you don't want it too thick. A little runny will do, but not so thin it doesn't scoop up with a spoon. I'd recommend using an old glass dish for mixing, as you can easily clean it afterwords with warm water, even if the plaster hardens.
***IMPORTANT!!!! DO NOT THROW THE UNUSED PLASTER MIX DOWN THE DRAIN OR TOILET. I highly recommend just dumping it into a garbage can bag or tossing it some other way that doesn't not involve your plumbing.***
Once you have enough to cover your stain, just plop some on and wait approximately 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, take a very wet sponge and wipe away the hardened plaster. I held my breath during the first application, but I must admit, this literally cleaned up everything!!! One of our stains took 3 applications to get up, but low and behold eventually the red stain was gone!!!
There you have it!!! According to what I read this works great on wine stains and fruit stains. Hopefully this comes in handy for anyone who may have an unfortunate granite countertop spill of this nature to deal with. The sheer ease of cleaning it was astounding and I would have never guessed it would work!
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