Repairing a Damaged Ceramic Cooker Hob

Being a landlord that rents out upmarket properties to tenants, sometimes, you have to accept that tenants don’t look after the property quite as well as the owner might.  So, when I found my state-of-the-art Rangemaster ceramic cooker hob completely scratched up on one of the hobs, I had to go through the process of determining whodunnit and exploring the various options to rectify it that would keep the costs down for the tenants so as not to upset them when neither of them were owning up to it, and still maintain the quality of the cooker.  This is what I had to deal with:

The mess that is the scratched up hob looking terrible.

It didn’t look good and I set about exploring several options including replacing the entire hob, seeking the service of professional cosmetic repair companies, and repairing it myself using a glass polishing kit.

Replacing the hob would have cost £447.97 from www.buyspares.co.uk/product.pl?pid=961458.  Although the best option for me and the most costly for the tenants, you have to be reasonable, especially where you can’t blame one particular tenant (because no one is owning up to it), and it might not be severe negligence but just a mistake in how they’ve cooked on or cleaned the hob.  Plus, imposing high charges against their security deposit may increase the chance of them taking legal action which can be costly and time-consuming.

So, I contacted two companies I found online: Plastic Surgeon and Hometech-UK.  I sent the above picture to both of them and asked if they could repair it.  Although they both claim to repair glass surfaces on their websites (Plastic Surgeon has an entire page about it and Hometech-UK simply lists “Glass Scratches” on their ‘About Us’ page), these are the response I got:

Plastic Surgeon offered a more explanatory reason:

The manager has advised that unfortunately we are unable to help with the glass hob repair as we cannot complete any repairs which are on the heat element, especially if the glass polisher was needed, as this may damage the cooker.

While Hometech-UK’s explanation was much more laconic:

We are not able to offer repairs on the glass hob.

Hmm.  So, I decided to try my own hand at doing the job they would’ve done, and I purchased a glass polishing kit from Amazon.  And here it is unpacked together with my cordless drill:

The polishing kit to be used to remedy the damage.

The instructions that come with it are very useful and detailed and it was definitely worthwhile reading them all before starting the process.  And here I am hard at work:

Looking like Bane as I attack that hob with my weapon of choice.

The mask comes with the kit and I couldn’t help feel like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises.  As I drilled that hob, I almost even said, “You don’t fear death, you welcome it. Your punishment must be more severe.”  OK, not really, but maybe if I’d had a Lego Drill Tank as a kid, I might’ve been able to make this mundane glass polishing task more fun by pretending I’m Bane versus my arch-enemy, The Cooker.  A cordless drill is not quite a fully-armoured Batman-blasting truck-destroying bad ass Drill Tank, though…

Raaaaa!

 

So, after a good hour or so shining up my hob with varying degrees of abrasive polishing pads and dreams of being a villain of the dark world, the end result was actually quite good:

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And that is how you keep tenants happy, keep your kitchen looking good, and it doesn’t cost a fortune when your tenants have been less than kind to your pride and joy.