Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with cleaning and removal

How to remove dye stains from hardwood?

Felicity Rilke — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:38:45 -0800

Ho do I remove confetti and streamer stains from hardwood floors? We held an election party last night complete with streamers and that metallic confetti which shoots out of poppers. Some of the streamers and confetti sat in pools of alcohol all night and today I am faced with candy-coloured marks all over my light-coloured hardwood. What's the best way to get rid of them (or, at the very least, fade them so they're less noticeable). I don't want to ruin the floors with my experimentation.

How do I remove stubborn packing tape?

tinkertown — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 14:17:32 -0800

How can I get brown packing tape off a refrigerator? We have a black late-model refrigerator. The whole thing is glossy black, and I think the surfaces are enameled aluminum, but I'm just guessing.

Awhile back we moved, and I secured the refrigerator doors using brown packing tape (the stuff that's glossy and brown colored, and is used for sealing moving boxes). Eventually we peeled the tape off, and a lot of the brown sticky stuff got left on the fridge doors. I haven't had much luck getting it off.

I tried soapy water, but it doesn't work well... it's like the tape fragments are saying "thanks for the bath!" I tried scraping with both my fingernail and the edge of a credit card, but there's still a gunky, thick film that's left, almost like dirty silicone adhesive. I am wary of using abrasives or sharp instruments that will scratch the fridge surface.

Any ideas how to get this stuff off? Is there a chemical that will lift this stuff off with minimal damage to the fridge?

What's the best way to clean spraypaint off a flight case?

jack_mo — Thu, 04 May 2006 04:36:57 -0800

What's the best way to clean spraypaint off a flight case? I have a standard flight case (like this one, with metal edges and clasps, black textured plastic sides) that's been spraypainted in various garish colours with lots of 'this way up' arrows and what I assume is the name of the band that owned it before me.

So, how can I best remove the paint without damaging the plastic? Turps just seems to spread the paint around.

Glue on hardword floor: removal tips?

robbie01 — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 17:31:44 -0800

I-Spilled-Some-Nasty-Shit-Filter: I was mounting a pipe to the ceiling in my loft, and being SO not a handyman was flying by the seat of my pants. I was super-gluing some stuff to the pipe in situ, and some of the glue dripped onto my (laminated?) hardwood floors. [mi] I cleaned some of it immediately, but I missed some, and now I can't get it off my floor. I was able to scrape the "bubbled" part of the glue that had some dimension to it, but there is still a 12" thin film swath of the stuff on my floor, and no cleaning solvent or supply I've tried have been able to dent the stuff. You can actually only see it when light hits it a certain way, but light tends to hit it a certain way a lot, and it looks bad. I believe the glue I used was something called "Gorilla Glue" that I picked up at Home Depot. My floors are not true hardwood, they appear to have some sort of coating that protects them from scuffs and scratches, but it seems as if whatever that coating is has fused to the superglue to make something I can't figure out how to remove.

Removing Dog Hair from a Car

machaus — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 16:24:28 -0800

Needed: Advice for removing dog hair from a car I'm about to sell. Tape works well for upholstery, but what about stubborn hair embedded in carpet? All the 50 cent vacuum rentals suck. Uhhh, I mean they don't suck.