the miracle of Oven Cleaner

If you enjoy buying vintage items from thrift stores or yard sales you need to have a few tricks up your sleeve to bring back the original beauty of those less-than-perfect, well-loved treasures that you may find.

I recently learned of the usefulness of Oven Cleaner when attempting to clean up some Pyrex. Case in point - this Pyrex Amish Butterprint dish that I found at a junk store for $1.00.

If you don't know a whole lot about Pyrex you may think that this pattern is black on white. It is that grease stained. Knowing my Pyrex patterns, I knew when I saw this item that it was originally turquoise on white. Because it was only priced at $1.00 I figured I would buy it and try to restore it.

I brought the item home and thoroughly sprayed it with a heavy coating of Oven Cleaner. If you are trying this be sure to do it outside as the fumes are very strong. If you can, let the item sit for several hours or even over night. After sitting, take a rag and rub the greasy area to remove the built on grime. The Oven Cleaner should loosen the grease so that it will wipe off.  It may take a little "elbow grease" to get it completely clean. For this particular item I had to do two separate treatments of Oven Cleaner to remove all of the black. When removing grime from painted-on-designs like this, be careful as the paint may remove from the glass if rubbed too hard.

Here it is after cleaning.

Oven Cleaner works well on Pyrex and other vintage glassware that may have a greasy film. It is great on the painted designs that may have changed color because of grease. The pan on the bottom was stained with brown streaks on the inside of the pan. The oven cleaner brought it back to a nice condition.

I hope that this tip has helped all of the Pyrex (and Fire King & GlasBake & Federal, etc.) collectors out there to restore those thrift store treasures.

KayteeJane