July 14, 2012

Dear Diary...My Embarrassing Kitchen Sink!

My hubby and I just bought a new house and moved in yesterday. Of course I have immediately gone into "home making" mode and have been cleaning, unpacking and organizing to my hearts content!

Today I tackled the kitchen and wanted to share an ah-maaazing tip I picked up on how to get your dingy, dirty porcelain sink back to it's shiny bright white finish.

























This is a three step process, but pain free, I promise! You'll need a dishwashing detergent power pack (Cascade, etc), bleach spray or regular bleach (or both!), and a very special product called Bar Keepers Friend.

I'm a little embarrassed for our home's previous owners...but I'll show the before photo anyway! This is what the sink looked like before I started:

















Step one, rinse your sink out with warm water, cut open one or two power packs & sprinkle in the damp sink. I lightly scrubbed mine & then let it set for about 10 minutes. You can use a brush to gently work out some of the stains and then rinse again with warm water to wash out all the cleaner. You'll start to see some of those stubborn stains have lifted away:



Step two, spray down the entire sink (sides included) with bleach, I used both the spray formula as well as the good ol' fashioned bottle bleach, for double duty! Let set again for about 10 minutes or so. Then rinse with warm water and this time you should start to see a major improvement from where you started:





















Step three, apply a good coat of Bar Keeper's Friend. This product you can find at your Home Depot for about $2.50. Definitely worth it! You can use it all over and on tons of products from copper to porcelain. Instructions say to let it set for about a minute, I left mine on for two just to make sure it did the trick. =)

























Finally...drum roll! Your sink should be left sparkling fresh & clean, and it's brightest white!


I hope you found this helpful AND useful! If you did, leave a note in the comments section and tell us how it worked for you!


Link to original post where I got the idea:
http://www.the36thavenue.com/2012/03/how-to-clean-a-porcelain-sink-2.html

17 comments:

  1. It soooo did!!! Ill try and be sure to do before and after photos too!!

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  2. It soooo did!!! Ill try and be sure to do before and after photos too!!

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  3. It soooo did!!! Ill try and be sure to do before and after photos too!!

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  4. Hi. What is a "power pack"? I would like to try this on my sink.

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  5. A power pack is the powdered dish washer soap that comes im a little plastic pouch. You should be able to find these at any Target, Wal-Mart, or grocery store. Cascade makes one called an "action pac". You can try googling it to find a picture of what you're looking for before you hit the store. Hope that helps, I'd love to hear how your sink turns out!

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  6. Great JoElla! Can't wait to hear how your sparking sink looks after trying this!

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  7. I have bleached my sink before and it helped (a lot!!) but my sink has a lot of scratches in the surface paint. Do you think the BKF would help hide the scratches too?

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  8. I clean my procelain sink with Soft Scrub first, rinse well with hot water then use a product called Cerama Bryte with an old tooth brush to get the scratches out. It works great!

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  9. Baking soda works very well for a first step, too. It's non-toxic, so I don't mind it getting on my hands. Plus it's super cheap!

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  10. Leah-I think it would, I recently read somewhere that it helped someone get rid of scratches on their dishes!
    Anonymous & Mindy-great tips as well! Thanks for sharing!

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  11. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!! I recently moved into a house with a badly stained kitchen sink and it's been driving me crazy! I saw your tips, tried it and....AMAZING! My sink is sparkly white. :-)

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  12. Rose, so glad to hear that! Enjoy your "like new" sink! =)

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  13. What about rust stains? My porcelain sink has stubborn rust stains I cannot remove!!

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  14. I wonder, would this work on the bath tub as well?

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  15. Tried this! I am amazed. I had even priced a new sink, mine looked so bad. This sink sells for about $1200 at Lowes--looked how much you saved me.

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  16. I forgot to mention, I left the drain baskets in. They now look like new also!

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  17. As amazing as the sink looks, Bar Keepers isn't suppose to be mixed with bleach. Please use caution when doing this.

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