Never do go to far from the apron.

I began giving the interior a bath starting with my favorite spot in the motorhome--the stovetop and range. I bought new wire brush set from Harbor Freight with the intention of scrubbing the thirty years worth of grime and rust from the top of the stovetop, fan, grating, and vent.



Scrubbing an hour with baking soda by my side amounted to very little progress with that rusty old cooktop!!

Valentine's Day morning, we took a trip to the hardware store (we're so romantic!) and picked up a few items for the project that we have going on. Power tools make everything go faster, so I hooked up a wire brush to the drill and scrubbed away at the cooktop some more. It took off layers of caked on grime and rust, but didn't get all of it. Not having this cooktop to my satisfaction means no fun camping trips, so I decided on a different route--painting the cooktop.

I had several concerns about painting the cooktop: the first being about flammability of the paint and whether the paint could endure surfaces exposed to heat. The second was about the off-gasing of toxins throughout the motor home and being cooked into the food. Fortunately, Rust-Oleum had a high-heat paint solution for painting BBQ grills, stove pipes, and--you guessed it--stovetops.




3 Coats later and the stovetop went from this:




To this:



Once we get the LP Gas running through the camper, we'll light the stove to let the top coat burn off for a while and then the surface should be fine to cook on!