On Fri, 14 May 2010 23:59:50 -0400, "
wrote:

Larry Weil wrote:
OK, I thought this would be easy. There was some black soot near a
ceiling register from an oil furnace. So, I got on a ladder with a damp
sponge, thinking I could just wipe it off.

Well, it didn¹t quite work our that way. The ceiling is smooth painted
sheetrock, and trying to wipe off the soot just spread it out and made
it worse. I then tried cleaners like Fantastic, they didn¹t do much.
So now I have an area with waves of grey in an otherwise white ceiling.

So, does anyone have any ideas of how to clean up this mess, short of
repainting the ceiling?

Thanks for your help.

My mom used to use a kneadable "eraser" to clean soot from ceilings when
we had oil heaters (long, long ago). Don't know if such a thing exists
nowadays,

They are still around. I forget what they are called.

?but PlayDoh always reminded me of the smell. Probably same
thing. Can't believe Fantastic didn't take it off. Mineral spirits
probably would work and is pretty safe on paint.

Someone told me to get emulsifier from a janitor supply store. I did,
but it didn't seem to work at the suggested strength.