Oven Cleaning

For the end of the summer, the eight of us cooks split up the kitchen into different deep cleaning section... Karen and I had the piece that included the ovens. Holy cow. I thought it would be easy, but it sure wasn't! We used a cleaner that was extremely strong. The first oven I did took Karen and I two whole hours, and we weren't even finished when we had to leave for the day. The cleaner got on my skin, and it was so strong that it burned my skin. It hurt terribly, and then my arms were all scabbed up from the burns. I got extremely sick that night from inhaling the strong fumes, too. By the time we were all finished, we learned how it is done. I had seven pairs of gloves on---two elbow high ones and three normal gloves so that I wouldn't get burned. A mask so that my lungs wouldn't get burned again. It still took a lot of time, but we scrubbed those babies like our lives depended on it. They looked pretty amazing by the time we were done! The cleaner did end up eating through my pants and burning my legs anyways. Oh well... good thing scabs aren't permanent!

To clean the tops and the backs, we climbed inside the ovens....yes, the ovens were on! They had to be hot in order for the cleaner to work. Umm... we were a little crazy. Here we are inside the ovens!