I'm not going to complain about the heat. It may get to me, but I'm not going to complain. I have complained for months now about dreary, wet, cold weather, so I can take the heat. My body complained last night---it told me that it was more tired than usual. I wonder why.
Maybe it was because I spent the morning at high, hot altitudes in the kitchen. I spent a good share of my birthday at high, hot altitudes in the kitchen too. Anybody checked up there in your home lately? Things grow above the cupboard line over the years. In our case, a thing grew. It was a sticky deep mass of chicken, hamburger, and steak grease combined with a touch of lint and a healthy dose of dust.
I started trying to remove the stuff about two months ago when I went up there to retrieve a severely tarnished silver goblet, which had sat just above the microwave for years. When the silver goblet refused to let go, I knew something was "amess." So, I found a higher bench to stand on. That brought me to almost eye level with the cabinet tops for the first time in twenty years.
"Eeeeeeeyuuuuu!" as my daughter would say. The grit-and-grime was downright scary, plus, it's been disturbing to open our sticky above-stove cupboard doors for years. I'm surprised we didn't have a bug morgue on top cuz any self-respecting fly coming in for a landing would have gotten stuck up there permanently. Must be they knew better than to light on the Love cabinets.
Anyway, my first attempt at removing the yucky growth went foul after about half an hour. Nothing in this house would even dent the mess. So for two months, I've looked up there each day, thought about the challenge and have opted to do other things. Finally, Sunday I talked to a professional house cleaner in hopes of finding something that could attack the grime.
"Well, I might have something," he said. Then, I talked to another pro at dunging out people's houses.
"I've never found anything that will take grease off from wood," she said. "Some of that stuff just stays there, and if you paint over it, it will sweat right into the paint." That revelation was reassuring. I had no intentions of painting my oak cabinets, but I did entertain the idea of sand paper when she mentioned that.
Instead I found some wood cleaner, some Formula 409 and a sharp metal spatula. First, I stood up there in that altitude, in that heat and began the excavation process with the spatula. I dumped each load in an old mixing bowl. Looked like some good stuff to mix in with chocolate cake dough. Yum. Yum.
Then, I found a set of sponges with scouring layers, grabbed the bottle of wood cleaner, sprayed and scoured, sprayed and scoured, sprayed and scoured------that was on the cupboard doors. On top, I doused the residue with killer amounts of Formula 409, then scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Slowly, stubbornly, the stuff eventually started coming off. I could smell victory over the odor of 20-year-old grease.
With every war, there are pockets of resistance. I discovered that yesterday morning when I realized the cabinets above the refrigerator have tops too. And, their tops, though not so saturated as those above the stove, had layers of growth too. So, while Don Palmer worked away at some fix-it jobs in the kitchen, I continued to scrub.
It was hot and sweaty up there, but eventually I could come down with a sense of satisfaction that I had gone to the cabinet tops and had come down a winner.
We still have much to do to leave this house in respectable shape for future tenants, but I'm feeling pretty good in this summer heat, that the worst challenge has been overcome, thanks to a spatula, and several overdoses of wood and grease cleaner.
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