Your Place: Tips on cleaning toaster-oven glass, stone tabletops

In response to advice on how to clean a toaster oven, a reader in Chicago wondered how to clean the glass.

The answer, from a reader in Baltimore, is "just use the cleaner designed for use on glass cooktops. I've been doing it for years - works every time."

Thank you.

Question: I have a very expensive stone dining room table, imported from Italy, that has some type of finish on it. Recently, I discovered a ring stain from a glass. How can I remove this? I called the shop where I bought the table several years ago, but they were unable to help me.

Answer: We have a polished-marble top on our dining room table (it took four movers to get it to this house from our last one 10 years ago), and we were warned about the glass-ring staining. We have been able to deal with the glass rings before they were set in stone, so to speak, and that could be the problem you face now.

It is odd that the store from which you purchased the top doesn't know how to clean it. One would think that, because the table was so expensive, directions on how to care for the stone top would have accompanied it.

I looked on the Internet and found a site called www.howtocleanstuff.net. I'm not suggesting that what the site offers works, but it does offer more possibilities to fix your problem than I found elsewhere.

From what I've read, the ease with which you can solve the problem depends on the stain. Wine is tough; water, not so.

Q: I have a 25-by-12-foot room addition with 2-by-10-foot floor joists and  3-foot 2-inch vertical clearance in the unheated, all-concrete crawl space.

The space between the joists is fully insulated with fiberglass. There are two adjustable outside vents. Our floor still gets cold in winter. I wonder if I should add some kind of Styrofoam panels to the concrete walls and  floor joists.

A. I insulated my crawl space with fiberglass batts - not only between the joists, but on the concrete floors and along the walls up to the joists - and sealed the gaps. While I did get the temperature of the room within a couple of degrees of the warmest room - the dining room - there was only so much I could do.

That said, I added a rigid foam insulation panel in the empty space under the dining-room overhang a couple of years back - it is where I sit at dinner - and it made a great difference. I cut the panel to fit snugly and used spray-foam insulation to seal any gaps.

You might want to give it a try, but sometimes there is only so much we can do ourselves.

From Linda Sebastiani: "A few weeks ago you had a question about the smell of smoke from a fireplace/woodstove.

"We had that problem with our woodstove insert in our fireplace. It would smell like a smokehouse for meat. It was the worst on hot summer days with the air conditioner on. I would clean out the insert at the end of the season and shut the damper, but still the smell.

"One time, when I had the chimney cleaned, I told the man about my problem. He recommended putting charcoal in the insert after I cleaned it. Just plain old charcoal, not the kind that lights easily.

"After I did that, I had no problems with smell and it was easy to start the first fire of the season."

Thank you, Linda.

From a reader: "I saw your column on rugs that cause staining on vinyl floors. I have expensive vinyl flooring in my kitchen and also have throw rugs in front of my sink and stove.

"Both areas have big, ugly, yellow spots. My vinyl is ruined because of this. I spent a sizable amount of money for this floor and nowhere did it say from the manufacturer not to use throw rugs on the flooring, nor did the salesperson tell me that throw rugs would cause this.

"I believe the manufacturer should be warning people who purchase vinyl that a situation like this could happen."

Thanks for your thoughts. Many manufacturers do warn consumers about it, but too often those warnings are not read. Read before and after you buy.