Sprinkling baking soda on a soot-covered smoke shelf in Cincinnati cut my brush time in half
Did a job in an old Cincinnati house last week where the smoke shelf was caked in 20 years of tar-like soot that my brush just smeared around. I dumped half a box of baking soda on it, let it sit 10 minutes, and the stuff came off in flakes instead of goo, probably saved me 25 minutes of scrubbing. Does anyone else do the baking soda trick on smoke shelves or is there a better powder for that kind of baked-on creosote?