I have a kitchen worktop with what was good quality laminate 10-12 years ago (can't recall the 'make' now).
The problem is that some of the surface has gone 'sticky' - and yes it does get wiped clean.
It's only in patches - mainly around thehob area (gas).
The surface is still hard and has not discoloured or chipped at all, its just that it feels sticky and not the normal smooth 'polished' finish which there is elsewhere.
Any ideas why this should have happened, and is there anything I can do to get it back to good condition. It would be a nightmare of a job to have to replace the worktop now.
Fat vapour condenses and eventually dries out to a sort of linseed oil like rubbery muck around hobs. Strong alkali will shift it, but *may* attack the laminate, so get it on, leave a few minutes and get it off.
There is a surface cleaner called "Bar Keepers Friend" - available from Robert Dyas and some supermarkets. I would be amazed if that doesn't do the trick
It may affect the glue its put on with tho. Depending.
No, but it can chemically alter the top layer. Most lamniates don't have surface colour - there is a substrate of smething like phenolic resin and paper, then a color layers, and on top a clear layer of abrasion resistive material. All of which are _resonably_ solvent and dirt proof, and definitely water proof.
HOWEVER I used to have a Formica laminated top on a workbench years ahgo. Cellulose thinners actually softened the top layer, and allowed me to wipe it, and the pigment underneath, off.
Or was it? Might have been nitromethane that did that...
Anyway, hydrocarbon solvents and strong alkali will both lift heavy fat. The trouble with hydrocarbons is that they don't change what is there - just dissolve it, and when they evaporate, its still there.
The key to dgreasing with solvents os to splp them on then use a detergent to make the whole shebang water-soluble. But alkali turns the fats into detergents anyway, more or less.
The trick is to use just enough to attack the grease, not anything else.Many plastics ARE chemically altered by alkali. Many are not. Only way is to test and try.
BTW acids like vinegar to bugger all to grease. They are useful tho to neutralise alkaline residues after you have used the caustic :-)
Mr Muscle oven cleaner is powerful Mooti. It appears to be spray on caustic foam. I use it on all my vitreous enamel pans when burned on fat builds up, and the aga top. You need a good extracor fan as well tho.
The post you are referencing was posted 3 years before you installed the kitchen! Do you think someone is going to hang around for 17 years to answer you.
Your posting these to homownershub makes things worse not better, because it makes their system think it's a popular thread and therefore worth sending here.
Home owners hub don't base their display of posts to their subscribers based on most popular or most current. Any post from that web site is referenced to something at least 5 years old, and often 10 to 20 years ago.
All the posts to this newsgroup are collected and published by that web site. The problem is that they drag up a post from 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago and re-publish as if the question had been asked yesterday. The second problem is that subscribers to that web site seem to think that we, on the Usenet, are seeing that same as they are with all the previously historic postings and fail to quote any context with their reply.
Yes indeed because the post you reply too long since expired, By all means start a new thread with details of what the worktop is made of and how it came to be the way it is. Often these issues occur due to poor plastic manufacture where after some time the binder separates from the plastic, making the surface sticky. In the long run it will eventually continue to degenerate and the only fix is a new worktop. Of course if its only in certain places, it could be that a cleaner has been used which contains a partial solvent for the plastic. Often you can find bits where appliances sit, say microwaves, which are not sticky, since they were not cleaned very often. Brian
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