In the last article about finials in this billionaire's home I mentioned we take the lampshades outside for dusting, and I've had a few email inquiries as to how and why. So I'm happy to share what I know:
- The lampshades here are mostly designed with expensive, pleated materials and feather dusters, even ostrich, don't work that well on fabrics.
- Lint rollers can easily stretch the fabric and don't clean inside the pleats.
- If you attempt to vacuum the shades (even set on low suction) it's very easy to suck in and tear delicate fabrics. And you'll not want to do that.
So what to do?
In butler school we were taught to take lamp shades outside and dust them with a very-fine, soft-bristle paint brush. It's that simple. And you won't believe the clouds of dust and pollen you'll sweep off. It's time consuming, of course, especially when dealing with over a hundred lamps as we are in this house.
But this is extremely important to those of us who suffer from allergies. How long has it been since you gave that lamp shade on your bedside table a good dusting?
Around here we dedicate a whole day to this, a couple of times a year when our employers are away and there's nothing much else to do. We crank up the music and spend all day running in and out, dusting every lampshade in the house. It's not all that difficult, but then we're getting paid for this task, aren't we?
Thanks for dropping in tonight,
Andrew
Showing posts with label Cleaning Techniques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cleaning Techniques. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
WD-40 to the Rescue!
In Town & Country magazine's November 2011 issue, there's an article entitled At Your Service by Jonathan Reynolds about things a butler should know and do. Mostly it was interesting, but one of those things was about "bowing from the waist as you back out of a room."
As the bad butler I apparently must be, let me tell you this is NEVER going to happen around here! I don't even bow when I enter the room, much less ass-backward on the way out. This is America after all, not Great Britain. (Which is not say we don't have a lot of Queens, but none of them are actually royalty.)
Anyhow, the article wasn't entirely useless. Christopher Ely (who was once a butler at Buckingham Palace!) mentioned that WD-40 was great for removing lipstick from fabrics. Really?
Around the Missus's vanity mirror there's always makeup and eye shadow droplets in the beige carpet in her boudoir, not to mention lipstick smudges when she accidentally drops the tube.Usually I just call in a professional carpet cleaner now and then to tidy up this area. But I decided to try Mr. Ely's recommendation. And I'm absolutely stunned!
I sprayed the lipstick and the black eye-shadow specks with WD-40, wiped them with a dry cloth - and voila, gone! I've yet to experiment if it works on dinner napkins, pillow cases, and clothing. But what can it hurt to try?
What I also don't know is whether or not this leaves a residue in the carpet like most spot cleaners, which will eventually attract dust and create a brown spot. But who cares? The lipstick is gone, and residues can usually be eliminated with a general carpet cleaning.
Hope this might be of help in situations around your home, and thanks for stopping by tonight,
Andrew
As the bad butler I apparently must be, let me tell you this is NEVER going to happen around here! I don't even bow when I enter the room, much less ass-backward on the way out. This is America after all, not Great Britain. (Which is not say we don't have a lot of Queens, but none of them are actually royalty.)
Anyhow, the article wasn't entirely useless. Christopher Ely (who was once a butler at Buckingham Palace!) mentioned that WD-40 was great for removing lipstick from fabrics. Really?
Around the Missus's vanity mirror there's always makeup and eye shadow droplets in the beige carpet in her boudoir, not to mention lipstick smudges when she accidentally drops the tube.Usually I just call in a professional carpet cleaner now and then to tidy up this area. But I decided to try Mr. Ely's recommendation. And I'm absolutely stunned!
I sprayed the lipstick and the black eye-shadow specks with WD-40, wiped them with a dry cloth - and voila, gone! I've yet to experiment if it works on dinner napkins, pillow cases, and clothing. But what can it hurt to try?
What I also don't know is whether or not this leaves a residue in the carpet like most spot cleaners, which will eventually attract dust and create a brown spot. But who cares? The lipstick is gone, and residues can usually be eliminated with a general carpet cleaning.
Hope this might be of help in situations around your home, and thanks for stopping by tonight,
Andrew
Friday, September 9, 2011
Cleaning An Original Oil Painting!
If you have oil paintings in your home, whether they're historic and valuable or just a souvenir from a street painter in Paris, you'll want to keep them clean.
But if you're employed by the rich, as I happen to be, then taking care of their art work is part of the job - in fact your job is at stake! We have responsibilities both to our employers and to the art works as well. If you can bear with me, there's two categories I want to address tonight:
Restoration: As house staff, this is something we do not do! Any yellowing of the varnish, any flaking or tears in the canvas - these problems must be sent to a professional Conservator for resolution. Beware, there are many dangerous do-it-yourself websites for art restoration. But are you really willing as a novice to risk destroying a half-million dollar painting and losing your job? No! Simply tell your employer that it's beyond your expertise and take it straight out to a Conservator.
Most rich people would agree with this without hesitation. But I know of a situation where a famous lady stumbled and smashed her fragile martini glass into an original Alexander Calder, leaving a one-inch slash in the canvas. Hysterical at the time, and her equally-famous host, the owner of the painting, told his butler the next day to just put some Super Glue on the tear. Can you imagine? How rich and nonchalant can you be? (And so much for Calder, who I don't care for anyway.)
Art Maintenance: Now this is something we can all do, whether your original oil is a paint-by-numbers gift from a life-long friend or an original Dutch Master. Here's the problem we face: dust and contaminates (like finger prints) can cause damage, perhaps even a fungus on the canvas. And pollen in the air can cause yellowing. So all we really need to do is keep the art work dusted. It's that simple. But we have to use the proper tools and here are two of the best:
Female Ostrich Feather Dusters: Ostrich dusters are all over the place, but ones made with female feathers are very hard to find. They attract dust like a magnet and are very gentle on the artist's brush strokes in the painting. I found this one helpful website, and here's the link. It's from Parish-Supply.com. But you have to scroll down to "Pop-up Feather Duster" where it says "made with all natural mature soft grey-brown female ostrich feathers". As I said, really hard to find. But if you can't, then a regular ostrich duster (male feathers) is better than none.
Sable Brushes: The ultimate in soft brushes. Easy to find, available in any art store. Made from tail hairs of a sable marten. Like female ostrich feathers, these are great for dusting deep into the artist's brush strokes, especially if it's an abstract piece done with a Palette knife. These brushes can clean deep into those globs of paint.
BUT HERE'S A WARNING! These feather dusters and brushes must be labeled and kept separate from all other dusters. Why? Well, what if there's a beautiful figurine on a coffee table that people pick up and look at? If you dust this with your sable brush, then you could contaminate the brush and transfer human skin oil from the figurine to an original oil canvas. Remember all those signs in the museums, "Do Not Touch"? There's the reason. Skin oil is full of destructive contaminates.
This has been way too long, but I hope it's been helpful.
There are of course issues about keeping oil paintings in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment, about protecting them from sunlight, and about the proper ways to light a painting. But that would have to be another topic altogether in some future post.
Before going, I would like to say that one of my favorite things in this job is to prance around with a feather duster and accidentally overhear conversations among the high and mighty, while pretending to dust a Rembrandt. You can't imagine how much fun that is!
Thanks for dropping in,
Andrew
But if you're employed by the rich, as I happen to be, then taking care of their art work is part of the job - in fact your job is at stake! We have responsibilities both to our employers and to the art works as well. If you can bear with me, there's two categories I want to address tonight:
Restoration: As house staff, this is something we do not do! Any yellowing of the varnish, any flaking or tears in the canvas - these problems must be sent to a professional Conservator for resolution. Beware, there are many dangerous do-it-yourself websites for art restoration. But are you really willing as a novice to risk destroying a half-million dollar painting and losing your job? No! Simply tell your employer that it's beyond your expertise and take it straight out to a Conservator.
Most rich people would agree with this without hesitation. But I know of a situation where a famous lady stumbled and smashed her fragile martini glass into an original Alexander Calder, leaving a one-inch slash in the canvas. Hysterical at the time, and her equally-famous host, the owner of the painting, told his butler the next day to just put some Super Glue on the tear. Can you imagine? How rich and nonchalant can you be? (And so much for Calder, who I don't care for anyway.)
Art Maintenance: Now this is something we can all do, whether your original oil is a paint-by-numbers gift from a life-long friend or an original Dutch Master. Here's the problem we face: dust and contaminates (like finger prints) can cause damage, perhaps even a fungus on the canvas. And pollen in the air can cause yellowing. So all we really need to do is keep the art work dusted. It's that simple. But we have to use the proper tools and here are two of the best:
Female Ostrich Feather Dusters: Ostrich dusters are all over the place, but ones made with female feathers are very hard to find. They attract dust like a magnet and are very gentle on the artist's brush strokes in the painting. I found this one helpful website, and here's the link. It's from Parish-Supply.com. But you have to scroll down to "Pop-up Feather Duster" where it says "made with all natural mature soft grey-brown female ostrich feathers". As I said, really hard to find. But if you can't, then a regular ostrich duster (male feathers) is better than none.
Sable Brushes: The ultimate in soft brushes. Easy to find, available in any art store. Made from tail hairs of a sable marten. Like female ostrich feathers, these are great for dusting deep into the artist's brush strokes, especially if it's an abstract piece done with a Palette knife. These brushes can clean deep into those globs of paint.
BUT HERE'S A WARNING! These feather dusters and brushes must be labeled and kept separate from all other dusters. Why? Well, what if there's a beautiful figurine on a coffee table that people pick up and look at? If you dust this with your sable brush, then you could contaminate the brush and transfer human skin oil from the figurine to an original oil canvas. Remember all those signs in the museums, "Do Not Touch"? There's the reason. Skin oil is full of destructive contaminates.
This has been way too long, but I hope it's been helpful.
There are of course issues about keeping oil paintings in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment, about protecting them from sunlight, and about the proper ways to light a painting. But that would have to be another topic altogether in some future post.
Before going, I would like to say that one of my favorite things in this job is to prance around with a feather duster and accidentally overhear conversations among the high and mighty, while pretending to dust a Rembrandt. You can't imagine how much fun that is!
Thanks for dropping in,
Andrew
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
How To Clean a Chandelier!
As the Butler in a billionaire's household, something I'm often asked is "How do you clean your chandeliers?" And my answer is always "We don't. We get someone else to do it!"
Cleaning a chandelier is one of the most tedious time-consuming tasks known to mankind. So if there's any way you can avoid it, don't even think about doing it yourself. Among other chandeliers in this house, in the dining room we have an enormous Baccarat - three tiered with forty-six lamps. There's several dozen large crystals and literally hundreds of small ones, including the ones on beaded loops. Honestly, there's just no way can we clean this monster ourselves.
But here's what I know, and what we do around here:
1) First and most important, there's several products on the market that ask you to spread a drop-cloth below the chandelier, then spray all the crystals with their product. Supposedly all the dirt, grime and soot will just drip off. But nay, not so! None of them work very well, they all leave the crystals streaked and cloudy, so don't waste your time and money with this.
2) We keep our chandeliers looking fresh by dusting the cobwebs and hand-polishing the large crystals ourselves. (You need to use a rubber glove and a lent -free cloth sprayed with Windex, or some other glass cleaner of choice.) If the large crystals look sparkling clean to the casual observer, then that must mean the entire chandelier is clean, right? If a guest just stands there and rudely stares at your chandelier, he needs to be thrown out and never invited again.
3) The most effective way to clean a chandelier, of course, is to send it out to a professional cleaner, who will take apart each crystal, polish it, and reassemble the entire fixture. And there goes an easy $20,000 for the movers to take it down, for the experts to clean it, and the movers to re-install it. And your dining room will be out of service for at least a couple of months.
4) Our solution around here is to hire someone willing to sit on a ladder for hours on end and polish each and every crystal by hand. Not to be insensitive but you'll probably want to find someone with minor OCD's and you''ll want to pay a hefty hourly rate, comparable to a renowned surgeon who does heart transplants. We have a wonderful young lady who can clean our dining room chandelier in about eighteen to twenty hours.
So there you have it from a professional butler - for whatever it's worth. You know in your heart you'll never clean your own chandelier. So get rid of the guilt and get someone else to do it.
Thanks for stopping by tonight. I hope this was helpful.
Andrew
Cleaning a chandelier is one of the most tedious time-consuming tasks known to mankind. So if there's any way you can avoid it, don't even think about doing it yourself. Among other chandeliers in this house, in the dining room we have an enormous Baccarat - three tiered with forty-six lamps. There's several dozen large crystals and literally hundreds of small ones, including the ones on beaded loops. Honestly, there's just no way can we clean this monster ourselves.
But here's what I know, and what we do around here:
1) First and most important, there's several products on the market that ask you to spread a drop-cloth below the chandelier, then spray all the crystals with their product. Supposedly all the dirt, grime and soot will just drip off. But nay, not so! None of them work very well, they all leave the crystals streaked and cloudy, so don't waste your time and money with this.
2) We keep our chandeliers looking fresh by dusting the cobwebs and hand-polishing the large crystals ourselves. (You need to use a rubber glove and a lent -free cloth sprayed with Windex, or some other glass cleaner of choice.) If the large crystals look sparkling clean to the casual observer, then that must mean the entire chandelier is clean, right? If a guest just stands there and rudely stares at your chandelier, he needs to be thrown out and never invited again.
3) The most effective way to clean a chandelier, of course, is to send it out to a professional cleaner, who will take apart each crystal, polish it, and reassemble the entire fixture. And there goes an easy $20,000 for the movers to take it down, for the experts to clean it, and the movers to re-install it. And your dining room will be out of service for at least a couple of months.
4) Our solution around here is to hire someone willing to sit on a ladder for hours on end and polish each and every crystal by hand. Not to be insensitive but you'll probably want to find someone with minor OCD's and you''ll want to pay a hefty hourly rate, comparable to a renowned surgeon who does heart transplants. We have a wonderful young lady who can clean our dining room chandelier in about eighteen to twenty hours.
So there you have it from a professional butler - for whatever it's worth. You know in your heart you'll never clean your own chandelier. So get rid of the guilt and get someone else to do it.
Thanks for stopping by tonight. I hope this was helpful.
Andrew
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Baby Diapers for Cleaning!
In my capacity as the butler for a billionaire family, one of our most important cleaning tools around here for polishing glass, mirrors and crystal stemware is old-fashioned baby diapers.
Why? Because they don't leave lent!
But golly are they hard to find - old fashioned flat-fold diapers. Earlier generations know about this of course, but when I told the Missus (who I dare say has never cleaned anything in her life), she thought I was nuts.
I finally found them at Babies R Us, made by Gerber. It even says on the outside of the package "For Diapering, Burping, Nursing, Car Washing & Waxing, and Household Dusting". Of course I showed the package to both the Missus and Nelda (our ancient Teutonic executive housekeeper) to justify my existence. The Missus gave me a polite smile, and Nelda loves them.
But here's a tip: You have to wash them separately from everything else or you'll contaminate them with lent from other articles in the washer and dryer, and destroy the whole purpose.
I hope this information is useful. Honestly I don't know what we'd do without them. As always, thanks for dropping by.
Andrew
Why? Because they don't leave lent!
But golly are they hard to find - old fashioned flat-fold diapers. Earlier generations know about this of course, but when I told the Missus (who I dare say has never cleaned anything in her life), she thought I was nuts.
I finally found them at Babies R Us, made by Gerber. It even says on the outside of the package "For Diapering, Burping, Nursing, Car Washing & Waxing, and Household Dusting". Of course I showed the package to both the Missus and Nelda (our ancient Teutonic executive housekeeper) to justify my existence. The Missus gave me a polite smile, and Nelda loves them.
But here's a tip: You have to wash them separately from everything else or you'll contaminate them with lent from other articles in the washer and dryer, and destroy the whole purpose.
I hope this information is useful. Honestly I don't know what we'd do without them. As always, thanks for dropping by.
Andrew
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Tips on Silver Care!
I'm sure you've seen those ads on TV where you dip a piece of jewelry or a silver fork into a liquid and it comes out sparkly clean and shiny, right? Very nice. But honest to God, don't ever do that! Seriously!
Any time you polish silver you're removing a micro-amount of the precious metal itself. When dealing with sterling, you're ok. But when polishing silver plate it's only a matter of time until you polish all the way through the thin layer of silver to the base metal underneath. (We have some silver-plated serving platters here that have been polished so often that the copper metal underneath shines through.) So rule number one, polish as infrequently as you can get away with.
Second, these liquid dips not only remove more silver than regular polish, they can easily destroy the patina (the unique appearance) of the silver object. In our modern culture, old things (except for people) are considered valuable. All the tarnish down in the fine filigree work of a silver object or the handle of a sterling spoon or fork is highly desired and ostensibly (not always) adds to its value. With regular routine polishing you're safe because you cannot remove this deep tarnish or destroy the patina with a simple cream polish.
However, the dips we see on TV can remove all the desired tarnish and leave your employer's precious, prized possessions looking like something shiny and new from Walmart. And you can easily lose your job for this transgression!
With over three hundred silver ornaments, platters, vases, picture frames and objet d'arts in this house (not to mention hundreds of pieces of flatware), the first thing I did when I started working here was to get everything polished and brought up to maximum peak appearance. You can use Wright's Silver Cream, it's good. I prefer Goddard's (not that it's any better than Wright's) but simply because it's a British company and I've heard through the grapevine that Regina uses Goddard's in both Buckingham and Windsor Palaces.
So now I can maintain this peak appearance simply with old-fashioned silversmith gloves. Around here we use Goddard's "Silver Polishing Mits". With these I can walk all around the house, pick up any silver object and handle it gently with these gloves (on a regular basis) and not have to go through the long, laborious process of polishing each and every piece, month after month.
Unfortunately these gloves are very rough on the skin and nails, so you'll need to wear some thin medical-type rubber gloves before putting on the silversmith gloves. Make sense?
That's all I've got tonight. Just wanted to advise you not to ever destroy your prized possessions by dipping them in some unknown destructive chemical you see on TV. I'm not getting kickbacks for product endorsement here - just sharing what knowledge I've got. Silver care is a real challenge in both time and labor. And there's definitely ways to minimize the effort.
As always, thanks for stopping by,
Andrew
Any time you polish silver you're removing a micro-amount of the precious metal itself. When dealing with sterling, you're ok. But when polishing silver plate it's only a matter of time until you polish all the way through the thin layer of silver to the base metal underneath. (We have some silver-plated serving platters here that have been polished so often that the copper metal underneath shines through.) So rule number one, polish as infrequently as you can get away with.
Second, these liquid dips not only remove more silver than regular polish, they can easily destroy the patina (the unique appearance) of the silver object. In our modern culture, old things (except for people) are considered valuable. All the tarnish down in the fine filigree work of a silver object or the handle of a sterling spoon or fork is highly desired and ostensibly (not always) adds to its value. With regular routine polishing you're safe because you cannot remove this deep tarnish or destroy the patina with a simple cream polish.
However, the dips we see on TV can remove all the desired tarnish and leave your employer's precious, prized possessions looking like something shiny and new from Walmart. And you can easily lose your job for this transgression!
With over three hundred silver ornaments, platters, vases, picture frames and objet d'arts in this house (not to mention hundreds of pieces of flatware), the first thing I did when I started working here was to get everything polished and brought up to maximum peak appearance. You can use Wright's Silver Cream, it's good. I prefer Goddard's (not that it's any better than Wright's) but simply because it's a British company and I've heard through the grapevine that Regina uses Goddard's in both Buckingham and Windsor Palaces.
So now I can maintain this peak appearance simply with old-fashioned silversmith gloves. Around here we use Goddard's "Silver Polishing Mits". With these I can walk all around the house, pick up any silver object and handle it gently with these gloves (on a regular basis) and not have to go through the long, laborious process of polishing each and every piece, month after month.
Unfortunately these gloves are very rough on the skin and nails, so you'll need to wear some thin medical-type rubber gloves before putting on the silversmith gloves. Make sense?
That's all I've got tonight. Just wanted to advise you not to ever destroy your prized possessions by dipping them in some unknown destructive chemical you see on TV. I'm not getting kickbacks for product endorsement here - just sharing what knowledge I've got. Silver care is a real challenge in both time and labor. And there's definitely ways to minimize the effort.
As always, thanks for stopping by,
Andrew
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