Clean Oil Stains from a Granite Countertop

LESLIE: Victor in California listens to The Money Pit on the Quake. And your question is a cleaning one. What can we do for you?

VICTOR: Yes, my question is how can I remove oil stains from granite? And then what kind of sealer is suitable to keep that from happening again?

TOM: Well, Victor, how did the oil stains get on the granite in the first place? Is there a story here?

VICTOR: Just from food, yeah. It’s a … it’s a counter in the kitchen. Very nice. It’s a beautiful surface and it’s very hard. But it does, unfortunately, absorb greases and oils. And it probably wasn’t sealed properly by the (inaudible) originally.

LESLIE: Oh, so it’s beyond just the fact of the oil has sort of just created a stickiness. Because if you do have some stickiness on your countertop, I always clean up – if I spill oil or if I’m cooking and there’s oil overspray – I tend to use some white vinegar on a rag to wipe that away. Because in the restaurant industry, you know, you know the two cancel each other out and if you ever had to fill an oil decanter and you got it on the sides, we would wipe it off with some vinegar. So I always think that’s a good solution. But it sounds like you’re beyond that.

TOM: You know, Victor, there is a website out there that specializes in cleaning materials for stone surfaces. It’s called Stonecare. Their website is stonecare.com. And there is a cleaning material out there called Marbamist. And it’s designed specifically to clean countertops. And once you rub the countertop down with this stuff, it does a really good job of taking out all of the old oil and the old stains. But the key thing here is that after you get it clean, you’ve got to seal it. And so there are also stone sealers that you can purchase that will seal it and that will stop some of the absorbative issues that’s causing all this grease to soak right in. So I would take a look at stonecare.com and pick up some countertop cleaner, clean it really good then seal it. And then, stop spilling oil on it, will you? (laughing)

VICTOR: (laughing) Thank you.