Cleaning grime and soot from porcelain tile - Magic Eraser

13 years ago

We had a kitchen fire in the house last week that left the entire house coated in a greasy film and soot.

Downstairs from the kitchen we have a porcelain tile floor. It was filthy to begin with from 5 years of daily use, but the soot makes it just that much worse. I talked with the owner of the smoke damage clean-up company about using a Magic Eraser to clean certain surfaces. We did not talk about cleaning the porcelain flooring, but I decided to give it a try. Here's the picture.

This area is right outside the doorway to my office and was the most dirty area of the floor. To go from dirty to clean took 3 light wipes with rinsing the sponge between wipes. As far as I'm concerned, it removed the soot and the underlying grime perfectly. It looks brand new! My wife and I had been fretting over how to clean the floor for about a year. All the cleaners we had tried were essentially worthless, so this is fairly miraculous. I am a little disappointed that the grout is darker after cleaning the tile.

I did not use the Mr Clean brand. The Mr Clean brand is $3.00 plus shipping for two sponges on Amazon. I found the "Scrub It Quick Eraser" sponges at Dollar Tree for $1.00 per box. They also have the floor mop version of the sponge for a dollar.

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Comments (3)

clt3
13 years ago
You can get a Mr. Clean mop with the sponge as a mop head.
dchall_san_antonio
Original Author
13 years ago
UPDATE

In my earlier post I was disappointed that the grout seemed to be darkened by the cleaning. I was just impatient and did not wait for the grout to dry. It appears the grout cleaned right along with the tile.

To clean the rest of the floor, the smoke cleaners used the Mr Clean Magic Eraser mop version. They could not find the Quick Eraser brand at any of the Dollar Trees near my house. I had to go back across town to the one I found them at to get the mop version. It is called ScrubIT Color Sweep on one side of the packaging and Quick Eraser on the other side. It took about 2 hours of very light mopping to clean 300 square feet. The sponge did not look worn out when she was finished, either.
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jannie
13 years ago
If your grout has gotten stained, here's a quick and easy way to refresh it; Mix some latex white paint with water, then "paint" it into the grout lines using a paintbrush. Quickly, before it's completely dry, go over the tiles with a slightly damp towel or rag. .Don't dig into the grout cracks. Wiping will remove any excess paint. Allow to fully dry before walking on it. That's overnight to 24 hours. And don't wash with harsh cleaners. Mine looks terrific-I did it 2 weeks ago in my main bathroom.