Washing the Garage Door - Removing Mineral deposits from Sprinklers

It took me over a month to get this project done with all the other things we had going on but I am VERY happy to say, we finished the garage door!!!!

I have wanted to wash and polish the garage door for about a year. I had to finish working on the trailer and then with graduation, camp, car issues etc, we just never got back to finishing it even thought we started washing it over a month ago. In reality, it was probably at least two months ago. 


I can say that I am quite the expert now at knowing what will and won't take off lime, calcium and mineral deposits on your garage and what will take the paint off your door! 

You can clearly see in the pictures just how disgusting the garage door had gotten. From a few feet away, it didn't look so bad because the entire things was red from the red dirt we have in our area. When the hinged sections of the door open and close, the grease would collect red dirt and you can see the red lines of dirt on each hinge line across the door. 
 
You can also see, that the bottom corners of the doors have sprinkler mineral buildup on them. I fixed the sprinklers when we purchased the house so they don't hit the house anywhere so we don't have flooding or lime buildup on the brick or windows anymore unless the wind is blowing really hard when they are on.
 
However, I never took the time to remove the build up that was on the door when we bought it so over the years, the wind, rain etc just turned the build up that was on it red. 

I tried all of the products shown above as well as "Lime Away", "CLR" and a few others. My favorite by far was the "Tub and Tile" by melaleuka company but it is the least available as you can't buy it at any local stores but have to get it online or through a distributor. 


You can see us trying those products after we tried the others to see if any of them worked better than what we had. 

You can see that in the top four or five pictures, we sprayed each bottle behind where it is setting and you can see how some started removing it and dripping and others did nothing. Then, you can see in the next one how I scrubbed the areas and then see how much came off with the solutions and scrubbing. 

I actually really liked the "Totally Awesome Cleaner" brand of Orange cleaner and their version of the Calcuim, lime and mineral remover. 


I have always liked "Totally Awesome Cleaner" in the house on toys, kitchen and  laundry as if "Zout" doesn't get it out on the laundry or carpet, the "Totally Awesome Cleaner" usually does. Sometimes it takes both but it is a staple in my cleaning arsenal.
 

I took a video and posted it on youtube about what we tried to clean the garage and what worked best and will have it on here. Tomorrow, I am posting about polishing the garage door with Teak oil just like we did on the trailer. 
 
I will tell you not to use a stiff brush or a "Mr. Clean" eraser sponge on the painted door or other painted metal surfaces as it took off some paint. 

Princess Five was helping me and I didn't notice until too late that it was taking off the paint in spots so along the hinges, there are some areas missing paint in spots. You can see that in the picture how it took off the paint. I used a back brush from the shower to wash the door and scrub as it is a soft brush and it gave me reach to wash the top and I didn't have to stand on a chair so I liked that it has a long handle.
 
You can clearly see in the top pictures and here that the sprays made a huge difference in taking off the red dirt. 

In all, I think we scrubbed the garage door three times spraying cleaner on it as the dirt only came off where the spray hit and that wasn't always every spot so each time, we got a bit more of the dirt off. 
 
We did have an issues with the spray taking off the oxidation which is the color of the door and then when I would scrub it, it would drip onto the cement under the door as you can see here. I just sprayed the paint with the orange cleaner and used the brush to scrub the paint drips off the cement so it wouldn't dry that way. 


You can see it clearly worked. Added bonus was that the ants that seem to like the seam in-between the garage door and the driveway, HATED the cleaning solution and the orange oil I guess because the next day, they were moving out! Check back tomorrow for how we polished the door!