Just last week I discovered a stain on my granite counters that ran alongside my drying rack. When I removed the towel that we keep under the drying rack there was a perfect line that showed where the mat had been sitting. We have one of the more popular granite colors, sorry I forget the name, that is known to be one of the harder stones to stain; but under the drying, mat was pristine white and black mottling, however next to it the white parts had turned greyish.
We didn’t know what was going on at first but after a little trial and error with a few different cleaners we figured out that soapscum was our problem. We still haven’t gotten it all off but the only cleanser that worked at all was this soapscum remover by Stonetech.
It’s for sealed granite so we are afraid that since it’s been about 16 months since the last time we sealed the counter that some of the soapscum has made its’ way into the pores of the stone. We were able to make a very noticeable difference in the stain by letting the cleanser sit on the surface and softening up the soapscum, then then using a soft toothbrush to scrub. We repeated this process a dozen times but the stains in the pores are going to take a little more effort.
We need something that would draw the scum from the pores. We couldn’t find anything made specifically for soapscum but we did find a poltice recipe that I am trying today that uses hydrogen peroxide and talcum powder. You can see how well it worked here in this video. If that fails I also have a can of oil remover that’s made for granite too. You can see both in action in this video.
I just added the poltice to half of the stain so we will get a good idea of how much of a difference it made. I’ll update this page with a couple of pictures of the results by the weekend and hopefully, our experiment will have been a success.
Unfortunately the poltice didn’t help to remove the soapscum from the pores of the granite at all. I’m back at it with the spray from Stonetech again. I still have the can of oil remover and I’ll try that over the weekend. I’ll update again once that’s done and hopefully I’ll have some better news.