OMG, is your oven a nightmare like mine usually is? I use my oven ALOT and when it starts to get disgusting, I start to ignore it and stress over it simultaneously. It’s a self cleaning oven but honestly I’ve never really understood that term, haha! Self cleaning it may be but man this thing requires some elbow grease if I really want to get it super clean.
Last summer after leaving it waaaaaaay too long, I broke down and finally buffed it up. I wanted to share the process here in case some of this info is useful to you. I found myself looking all over the internet trying to solve a few issues that I didn’t know how to deal with. One big issue was the oven door. I started this whole process with a self cleaning cycle to see what I could get rid of before calling in the big guns…..things like heavy duty cleaners, razor blades, and various other tools. Yup, I said it, I used razor blades in the cleaning of my messed up, baked on, oven.
Here’s part of what I was starting with…….the door was even worse! After the oven cooled from the Self Cleaning cycle, I took off the door and rubbed on a paste of baking soda and vinegar and let it set for an hour or so. Leave on longer time when you are dealing with heavy soil. A scrubbie comes in handy here. I love how well these work on scrubbing off hard to remove crud on just about anything! The best thing about them is they are washable and reusable. Once I scrubbed the entire door down with the scrubbie, I got out my handy razor blade. It worked so well to remove baked on grease from the glass. It takes some time but its well worth the results. I also used the scrubbie with a paste of Bar Keepers Friend and water to get brown grease marks (that had appeared after a self cleaning cycle) off the top of the oven door up by the handle. I didn’t want to replace that part due to cost and had never been able to get it off so this was pretty exciting. So satisfying! Look at how much grease is coming off the glass!You can see here that there was dust, dirt and pet hair (probably some human hair in there as well, yuck!) that had gotten in through the vents in the door. You can also see that the metal piece that holds the door onto the hinges had chipped and rusted over the years. I was able to order a new part online at Partselect.ca. I entered my model # and identification # from a sticker inside the oven and was then able to find the part I needed. It cost around $60 but was well worth it to make the oven look it’s best. A lot cheaper than replacing the oven! For me, totally worth it. More of the gunk between the oven door glass. That’s gotta go!On a flat surface, with a rug, towels or something soft so you don’t break the glass, carefully remove the top glass. You will have several screws to remove and likely that bottom piece that was rusted on my oven door, depending on your oven design. Vacuum up all loose dust, dirt, etc and then remove any baked on grease with the razor blade. I used a general purpose spray on cleaner (Mrs. Meyers) after to get the rest of the grime.
Just look at this piece of the door! New vs. Old. This is the part I ordered from Partselect.ca. Now for the racks. They were in really bad shape. Eeeek. I ended up doing a few things to them but I started by soaking overnight in a very hot tub of water and a couple of dishwasher pods. That got rid of a lot of grease and grime. I wasn’t completely happy with them so I took them out and scrubbed with a paste of soda and vinegar but it didn’t get me much further. I took them outside and resorted to spraying them with oven cleaner. That got a lot more off but still not perfect. I went with it though because the racks looked so much better and I’d spent a couple days at this point trying to clean them. Next time I’m faced with cleaning oven racks, I’m going to do the ammonia soak in garbage bag method. This was mid process……make sure you put old towels or sheets under your racks if you are soaking in your tub. As you can see, some rust or grease marks may appear and you don’t want that on your tub.After I was finished the process, I added a liner in the bottom to keep things clean. I love the Betty Crocker ones from Dollarama! However, they don’t always have them in stock. I added burner protectors under my wire burners which should help keep things clean on my stove top. These were also the Betty Crocker brand from Dollarama. Ahhhhhh, no more rust on the door! And I can see through the oven window. This brings me so much joy, haha! I’m sure many of you can relate! And here is the final product! A gorgeous oven makeover just in time for spring! Add this to your spring cleaning To-Do list…..you’ll be happy you did!
