Help me clean up the nuclear winter (flour fire) in my apartment

sarahkeebs — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:52:23 -0800

I had a very small kitchen fire ... but a bag of flour was involved, causing nuclear winter in my apartment. How thoroughly should I clean up, and how? Obviously I'm going to clean up the soot which is now ALL OVER my apartment. My problem is that the paint job, especially in the kithen and especially the cabinets, is so shoddy that (a) soot has settles into all the bubbles and flaws, making for a permanent speckled effect, and (b) cleaning (just basic damp-cloth cleaning) if revealing huge bubbles and making the paint crack and peel.

Now, the cruddy paint job was here when I moved in, and I always intended to paint over it. But this has revealed so many flaws in the cabinetry that I wonder if it's worth it. So:

Can I get rid of the visual traces of soot without repainting or hard scrubbing (which will mess up the existing paint)? And if so, what do I use?

FWIW, I'm in Toronto, I'd prefer not to use anything that might kill me, and I'm okay with methods that leave my kitchen temporarily unusable, as long as the rest of my (well ventilated) apartment is safe.

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Help me clean up the nuclear winter (flour fire) in my apartment