Adventures in Domesticity: Fixing Scratched Ceramic Cooktops

About a year ago, in some sort of negative cosmic karma, three of my major household appliances died within a month of each other. First it was the washer, which, after an expensive repairman visit, was determined to be quite dead from both a ball bearing and motor problem, the latter coming after the first problem resulted in spewed water into the inner workings of the beast.

Shortly thereafter, my spouse commented that the "clean" dishes were out of the dishwasher, but that it once again didn't do a very good job. Upon closer inspection, I mentioned that it might have something to do with the 2 inches of standing water sitting in the dishwasher. After a great deal of suctioning and scooping, poking, prodding and inspecting, that, too, was determined to be dead.

Then, in the middle of baking a delicious banana bread, the oven went "pop." Initially, I thought this might be a light bulb. However, after some time on the phone with the appliance maker -- and quotes for various separate charges for repair visits -- we determined that the whole electric system had committed suicide. Never mind that all three appliances (different manufacturers) were only 6 years old, and that for 3 of those years they had gotten minimal use because no one was living in the house regularly. We did have someone run light cycles on the washer and dishwasher to keep everything in running order -- clearly, a strategy that failed.

Heart heavy, wallet complaining, and spouse and children in tow, acquired replacements.

Everything was fine until last week, when I decided to make popcorn the old-fashioned way. I wasn't paying enough attention, and got the pan too close to the ceramic cooktop, resulting in lots of scratches.

Try as I may, using all the cooktop cleaner, polish, and whatever else we had on hand, I could not remove the scratches. I was afraid I'd have to look at the results of my carelessness forever, or at least until the budget would support replacing the cooktop.

After doing some research, one of the methods recommended saved the day:  Acquire some liquid metal polish, the kind designed to polish your household faucets (I used Weimen's) and a single-edge razor blade.  The polish was readily available at a supermarket locally.  Armed with that and a cotton ball, and working in small circles, I watched the scratches disappear.  It took a few applications to really see them go, and there were still some deeper marks.  That's where the razor comes in.  Working carefully, work the blade over the scratches at about a 45-degree angle.  That removed the rest of the problems.  From then, I just did a general cleaning and a polishing using the ceramic cooktop cleaner and polish.  The cooktop looks almost like new.  I also discovered that this worked for some areas with baked-on crud that the cooktop cleaner never seemed to touch. 

Hurray!!! The cooktop will leave to see another day and will not distract from the beauty of my kitchen (tidy is a separate matter altogether).

Now, if only I can figure out how to get my backmount kitchen faucet to stop leaking so I can turn on the hot water again....