Peel Clean

Together with many of my compatriots, this September 1st, I moved into a low-budget bachelor pad. One of the first things I quickly noticed was that the grayish brown kitchen floor, under many layers of hideous grunge, was originally white. Well, instead of using Drano or scrubbing it with my toothbrush, here’s a better idea.

Archeologists have over years, perfected the art of removing precious mosaics by applying a strong adhesive, which “grabs” onto the stone blocks and enables removing them out of their matrix. Why not do the same thing to the grunge on my kitchen floor?

It would work something like this. You’d pore a can of polymer glue on the floor, smear it on more or less evenly and wait a few hours for it to dry. Finally, you’d peal it off from one of the corners, with all the crud now fixed to the resin. The same principal would also apply to countertops, bathtubs, sinks, aquariums, etc.

The main problem would be getting the glue strong enough to remove years-old dirt while not damaging the surface. For this reason you would need to manufacture different levels of adhesive strengths for different types of surfaces (e.g. stone, wood, plastic, glass, etc.)

Note that I found a few HB variants of this idea (see links). But all of them (as far as I could tell) require the protective layer be installed when the surface is new and removed when it’s dirty. This won’t help you with surfaces that are already dirty. And besides, how many people do you think would want their hardwood/marble floors covers with sheets of plastic all the time?