Ask a Handy Femme: Cats, Radiators, and Secret-Keeping

by L M

All right, so I moved in with my much more domesticated boyfriend almost a year ago. Every once in a while I’ll do something/not do something that prompts him to lecture me on being a grownup. One of those things was writing something on our nice dining room table without anything underneath the paper, leaving an indent (and undeniable proof that it was me) in the wood. It happened a few months ago and now it has happened again. So far, I’ve been hiding it by only using indirect lighting so he doesn’t see it, but he’s bound to see my signature indented into the beautiful wood soon. Is the next lecture unavoidable or can I cover my tracks?!

You might be screwed but but but maybe not. If it’s dented and not scratched, and the wood isn’t broken, you can try covering the dent with a damp — not wet — towel folded once or twice and then gently ironing it with the steam off. Try this on an unexposed part of the table first, to make sure the finish will hold up. And don’t touch the wood with the iron, because it willscorch, and then you will be lectured. Then buff the whole thing with a good wax or polish. If it’s scratched, then you should be able to get a wax stick in a matching finish at the hardware store, made just for emergencies like these. Rub in, let dry, buff, polish, let dry, buff.

P.S. What are you writing with? A stylus? An awl??

Lucia, help! A reader of Ask a Clean Person wrote a really sad question about getting pet evacuation stains out of a wood floor. I had some thoughts for her but I also suspect her problem might be serious enough that she will need to spot-refinish some areas of her flooring. Oh and right, I have no clue how one would go about doing that, so if you could jump in here that would be fantastic.

For the Cat Lady —

That sucks so, so hard. For two reasons:

1. Animals dying. This is the one thing that utterly destroys me, because they don’t have language and are utterly dependent on you. I’m going to give you some unsolicited advice and suggest you get a kitten, ASAP. Preferably one that matches your old cat, so that the whiskers and hairs don’t get you quite so down.

2. Wood stain corrosion is just that, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to do a little spot refinishing. My beagle used to slobber like crazy when he was crated, and even a bath mat under his house couldn’t save my floors. That shit was like komodo dragon-spit destructive and turned the maple straight-up gray.

You’ve probably exhausted all your options in terms of floor wax, wood wax, polish, and oils, amirite? Fortunately, you don’t have to actually refinish all your floors: You can do spot touch-ups. (I’m assuming your cat wasn’t a projectile vomiter and didn’t carpet your floor in acidic hairballs.) Here’s what you’ll need, all of which you can grab at the hardware store and are useful to have on hand:

• A medium (80–120) grit sandpaper
• A very fine (220–240) grit sandpaper
• Mineral oil
• A good wood/floor paste wax — I’m a firm believer in the old school tins of it, like this SC Johnson one

• . It smells like my grandma’s house.
• A wood touch-up pen that matches your finish, if it’s not “natural”
• Spray polyurethane, if you have poly floors. (Poly floors are super super shiny and lacquered-looking. If you scratch them, you tend to get powder or tiny flakes rather than the dents or gunk that comes up from floors just finished with wax. Your 130-year-old floors have probably not been desecrated with poly.)

Now, if you want to try a last ditch trick before this, you can go at it with a super fine sandpaper — 360–600 grit, to buff away and damage. Then treat it with a wax or polish.

If and when this fails, let the wood dry out completely from whatever you’ve used on it before. I like to get all the polish and wax off with a good wood-soap and then air dry for a day or two, so it’s bone-dry. Then sand it — lightly! — with the medium grit paper first, until you see clean, healthy, un-vomity wood. Next, buff it with the fine grit sandpaper. Wipe off all the debris, and rub in some mineral oil, just like you would with a cutting board. Let it dry for a couple hours — this will restore the wood to a natural color. Then, touch up with the stain pen, if necessary; if not, then smear on some paste wax, let dry, buff, and repeat. (Bonus: buffing makes your arms buff! True story.) You should be good to go, assuming you don’t need poly. If you do need poly, then skip the wax and poly instead after the oil and stain have dried. It’s super easy — just spray it on, following the usual open-windows, protect your face/hands/new kitten precautions.

Good luck! And get another cat! (!)

I’m cleaning my forced heat radiator this weekend because I have the coolest life ever, and when I’m done I want to maybe do one of two things:

1. Paint the sucker anything other than the chipped metallic silver it’s currently wearing

2. Build some sort of cover for it so I don’t have to look at the horrible thing.

But, like, how?

OK, first, I have a question for you: Are you creeping in my brain? Because, and I shit you not, I was brushing my teeth last night, staring at the rusty-looking peely paint action on the steam pipe in the bathroom and thinking, “I’d better get on this in September, before the heat kicks in and it start to burn me again.”

Radiator covers are not super difficult to make but need to be adapted to the kind of heat you have and the amount of steam that comes out, so if the paint solution leaves you unsatisfied, we can do a project come September. For the moment: once you have this baby clean, you’re going to want to get some coarse sandpaper — anything between a 40 and 80 grit should do ya — and smooth any rough spots before proceeding, wiping off paint and flakes and stuff like that as you go with a tack cloth. Now: Krylon, being the awesome company it is, makes high heat radiator paints. The aluminum finish is probably what you have on there right now, but you can also work in white, black, and (blech) beige. What’s that? You need more options? Oh, hi, Rustoleum, isn’t your antique copper pretty? And if you want to be really clever, have the guys at your local hardware store tint a can of high-heat white paint to whatever color your little heart desires.

Remember that when working with spray paint, you want to go with a lot of thin coats rather than a couple heavy ones, which will result in bubble and drips and all kinds of unattractive things. Also: use a drop cloth, open your windows, have a fan at the ready to turn on afteryou’ve finished spraying. And seriously, seriously tie something over your nose and mouth, lest you end up having to cut away all your nose hairs because they’re covered in spray paint. That totally happened to a friend of mine. An anonymous friend who is definitely not me.

Lucia Martinez tries to be a lady.

Photo by Hellen Sergeyeva, via Shutterstock