On Mar 29, 4:07*am, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 3/28/2008 10:37 PM spake thus:

I live in a rented house where the plastic countertop (probably from
the 70's and 80's)
is badly stained. The landlord will not replace it. I was wondering if
I could somehow clean it.
Regular cleaners including comet cleanser doesn't do much. I was
wondering if using an orbital buffer would be more effective
especially with a more abrasive cleanser.
Can anyone recommend something more abrasive than comet for my
application?

What kind of stains? Before you start grinding the surface away
(remember that's what abrasives do, remove material), you might try
removing the stains with bleach. A lot of stains will respond favorably
to that. Try a small area first; use a Q-tip to apply just a little
undiluted bleach and see if it clears the stain.

I recently cleaned up an old piece of furniture with a Formica top by
using a mixture of (mostly) naphtha, denatured alcohol and just a dash
of acetone, scrubbing with fine steel wool. Cleaned up very nicely.
(This one had big gobs of dried paint on it.)

If you do ending up actually grinding the stains away, keep in mind that
you'll need to polish it up afterwards. Can be done, but involves a lot
of elbow grease.

If the countertop is white, try bleach. I had a white formica
countertop and stains came out easily using bleach.