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The home we bought is pretty great. It was owned by one family since it was built in 1957. However, the last years of the owners’ lives here did not seem to include much maintenance and definitely no deep cleaning.

One of the first things I did was remove the oven knobs and soak them in soap. A few hours later I was able to scrape off the patina of god knows what from them.

I tried washing the cabinets (knotty pine) by hand. I used (in separate attempts):

• Soap and water
• Murphy’s Oil Soap and water
• Vinegar and water
• Scrubbing bubbles left on for five minutes and wiped off

None of these are working. Mind you I do not have great arm strength so elbow grease is not going to be at play here. The grime on the baseboards and the trim near the light switches on doors is also like this. The trim is wood but there are large areas of dark grey that must be decades of human sweat and oil built up there.

Once I can figure out how to clean these cabinets I plan to get new cabinet pulls (I can feel the grime every time I touch the current ones).

Would a cleaning service work for this?

(Note: crosspost from r/HomeImprovement, but was getting no response there)