Ahhhhh...A Clean Stove Top

We traded out our old stove for a new ceramic cook top several years ago.  My mom has had a ceramic top for years and years and it's always shiny and clean.  My ceramic cook top has never been shiny and clean.  Well, it was the first day we had it.

That burner in the picture gets the most use and that yucky brown burned on gunk is the result of many boiled over pots of water and many nights of fried hamburgers. Yes, it's gross. Very, very gross.  I've had luke warm results using cook top cleaners.  Not even baking soda and vinegar really put a dent in the grime.  Obviously I had gotten to a point where I no longer tried to clean that nasty thing! 

The other day my cousin gave me a little tip. 
Use a razor to scrape off the gunk and then clean the cook top.  I thought scrapping would definitely work, but worried that it would scratch the cook top or scrape off the burner circles.  She explained that her directions said to do it.  Hmmmmmm.  I probably couldn't find the directions if my life depended on it!

This morning I thought, Ok, let's do it.  I found my trusty scrapper thingy and got to work.  And I really think her advise will change my relationship with my ceramic cook top forever.

The scrapper thingy I used came from Lowe's and I originally used it to scrape the paint from my back door window when I repainted it last year.  It's a razor blade in a nifty handle and it made scrapping the stove top very manageable.  I simply scrapped up as much gunk as I could manage and then used a Lysol wipe to wipe it away.  I'm sure a damp paper towel would have worked, too.

Once the scrapings were gone, I squirted on a nice amount of cook top cleaner and spread it around with a plastic scrub sponge.  Because the gunk on my stove was so over whelming, I used the scrub sponge to scrub up the remaining gunk on the stove top.  Seriously, I needed the extra scrubbing power!  You could use a paper towel and elbow grease, but why bother?  Then I used a paper towel to buff away the remaining cleaner.

I am utterly and completely amazed at how well the stove top looks.  There's still an area that I couldn't get totally clean.  It's an imprint of what appears to be the left, bottom edge of a box.  Maybe a pizza box?  Who knows.  But whatever it is, it isn't going anywhere.  And I am completely OK with that!