CLEANING 140 YEARS OF DIRT AND GRIME OFF OLD GRAVES | INCREDIBLE TRANSFORMATION | D/2 CLEANER

what's going on everybody it's robert and i'm out here with scott and we are in the waverly hall georgia cemetery in the bird plot here and what i've brought out here with us today are some cleaning supplies we've got some d2 right there we've got a little sprayer for our water water bottle some brushes and stuff and a sprayer for our d2 right there so what we're going to try to do is clean up on some of the bird graves here and i want to start with this one right here this is the grave of adam bird and his wife elizabeth it's the grandparents of jim henry bird who built my house and this stone is definitely the worst one here so we're gonna go ahead and just jump into it and try to try to get it cleaned up and i'll walk you through how we're doing it while we do it so let's get started now this d2 is the ideal thing to clean gravestones with according to most preservationists it's um it's a not a harsh cleaner at all and there's a couple different ways to do it you can either just spray it on the stone and leave it or you can scrub it and get immediate results using it it's a biological solution biodegradable no bleach no salts no acids safer around plants and wildlife really good stuff got some water and we've got some brushes just like this right there now when you're cleaning the grave you want to make sure you use uh soft brushes don't use a metal brush nylon anything like that you definitely want to use soft materials and even with brushes like this you want to be careful of the stone material before you start scrubbing it because as you guys have known if you've seen a sidestep adventures long enough we'll come up to some of these graves they're just already crumbling where even a brush like this will uh wear it down these are in pretty good shape there look folks robert finally brought a brush to the gravesite that's it i did it's got this kit that i ordered has gloves too um for doing this but i already spilled the d2 on my hands so i'm gonna stick them in the glove now all right so first thing i'm gonna do is just spray this down with just water just get some moisture on there i'm gonna follow that up with the v2 here i'm just going to spray it right over all of this moss and stuff that's on there a little sand don't spray him to the wind yeah i know i felt it all right so we've got that sprayed on now according to the directions we're supposed to give it about 10 minutes to soak in and start doing its thing and start working so we've got that side sprayed what i'm gonna do is just go ahead and spray a couple more of these stones down and then hopefully it'll be time to start working on cleaning that one the one that's not in the wind this time so the theory is that this stuff will this stuff keeps working on the grave and it'll eventually turn the stone back to that color it's already yeah it's already getting off of there because the stone should be it should be white like that it's just so covered up and you know stuff from over the years the other thing i'd love to eventually see about getting done out here is having this reset um yeah where it's it's off just a little bit yeah so eventually it will continue to go that way yeah eventually this one would fall you can see right here it's already starting stuff in here oh wow yeah sure enough that was definitely covered when we started yeah it was and we're aiming for something this color that's it okay go ahead and get really spray down a little willie's grave so outstanding it's already working yeah it is yeah okay [Music] so [Music] break well there's a maker's mark on here i've never noticed before all right i'll just let this stuff start soaking forgot to take it before picture well you got a video how do you have it on video let me just let it start working and give it a few minutes and start cleaning on it did the yeah must be made in china yeah that was dollar general so oh dollar general definitely yeah so we're just going to go ahead and scrub all of these down while we're waiting on it to uh look at that already on that side look at willis yeah holy cow so here's another example of what this stone should look like it should be that color oh oh oh i guess i'm too strong this rebottle's not working out for us this is uh henry bird's wife here mother little willy over there and the cool thing about this stuff is it's it's gonna work even if we don't scrub it off it just takes a little bit longer but it'll work with no scrubbing i'm sure there'll be some rain this afternoon yeah exactly [Applause] [Applause] i think this one is needs to be dug out or edged around a little bit now who is mary tate mary tate is jim henry's mother-in-law which is interesting that his mother actually isn't buried here but his mother-in-law is buried here so you can see the corrosion in this stone right down here where that's just all flaking apart there the the rock is turning into uh sand i'll have to come out here another time get some of those grasses off of these [Applause] and his second wife is not buried here no his second wife is buried over there in the uh newberry blueberry okay she's made with some new berries i believe i believe let me go look at her grave again make sure george henry bird here is uh archie's son he died kind of young he's the only only one of archie's kids that will at least survive to adulthood that's buried here in this plot i'm assuming and i could be wrong but i'm assuming that's one of archie's kids that must not live buried over there in the child's grave i could be wrong i haven't looked into archie as much as i have jim henry all right i should be ready to see something all right so i'm gonna grab our plastic here to give it some of this moss [Music] so get the brush all right let's just go ahead and jump into [Music] let's do the big reveal now [Music] definitely if you're going to be doing this definitely invest in a better sprayer than i did water sprayer here because this one yes i brought my pump yeah i should have got another pump this let's see don't pull hard on don't pull hard on it i knew there's something yeah there's a detail coming out anymore let's see [Applause] so i got these little little toothbrushes and little metal picks for in here or not metal wooden picks that toothbrush is probably better yeah i'd say so yeah there you go [Music] so [Music] yeah yeah okay all right well that's a uh improvement we're gonna spray it back down with uh d2 and let it keep eating away and all that discoloration that's in there right boy willis has changed a lot yeah it has he gave it a rust color for a lot a bit there all right over here a little willy's great you can see what we can do with this went back down with some water here [Music] so i think uh little willy's listed incorrectly in a couple places the sun now maybe uh people be able to read daughter off yeah well that's just it how many girls you know named willy right [Music] but her real name is probably will meena or something like that yeah i wondered about that but uh we'll just call her willy not sure she's used to that this stone needs to be reset too yes leaning forward they usually break off when they get a little bit further than that at the base so that's another reason to reset this one foreign see that's that's what we should be seeing this whole stone will eventually while this d2 starts working on go back to these these colors i'm gonna do kind of a quick wipe down over here on this one just to get all the heavy nastiness then let the rain take the rest of it yeah yeah we'll put that d2 back on it before we leave and let it just keep working on it i've seen these just sitting and then you know a few weeks time it'll really starting to get in there and kill all that growth that's causing that discoloration now everybody's gonna expect you to carry this kid around everywhere you go now right no i mean out in the middle of nowhere county it's about the middle of nowhere but no i still i document them but i'm still not the cemetery caretaker no no no [Applause] i think it's all just conjecture but i think that adam and elizabeth did quite a bit of raisin on the uh bird boys because they when they came back it looks like the boys came back first before their mother came back from louisiana right right after whatever happened to their father wherever he wound up his mother never remarried he probably did lots of lots of helping raise the boys still fascinating to me that their mother's not here but his mother-in-law is do you know where his mother their mother is yeah his mother is in a mckee plot at the old bethesda cemetery she was if memory serves correctly she was nancy jane mckee bird ah unless he probably wasn't a member of this church that's true yeah that's that's right uh bethesda's the baptist that explained it right right there the methodist in the baptist that's right it's like auburn and alabama fans there you go one or the other all right and that's what this whole stone should look like and with this cleaner on it will eventually look like it i have seen pictures of people who use this on stones that took a stone that looked like this and turned it back to that just takes time and then not a cheap spray bottle yeah not a dollar general spray bottle can you make out the maker's mark now look at that i can't see what this is exactly looks like a r t o p e r taupe r our top making making yep making georgia i see now i'm making soak in and do its thing let's uh get that toothbrush too don't leave it there in there we'll grab our clean brush look at uh jim henry's grave here i'm just curious as to how it works on one of these just do right here around this thing for now look at that oh jimmy clean up pretty good there all right old brother another water bottle [Applause] oh look at that man that's amazing [Music] there we go now that's a that is a good example of before and after right there yep look at that definitely gonna take some more time on some parts of it but there you go definitely helps if you have a spray bottle rather than just a jug of water but that's a change it definitely is and it's gonna continue to get better yeah it's gonna continue to get better and better all right last thing um we're running out of water here but what i do want to do look at willy's now as it's starting to dry oh little willy's looking good you can actually read it now i can barely read that here sweetly sleeps little willy daughter of jh and mj bird september 10 1875 died july 20th 1884. i couldn't read the epitaph before but i think i'll be able to now might need more light on i say sleep on sweet sweet willy take thy rest god called thee home he thought it best [Applause] just gonna give this one another scrub here since this is the one we worked on the most i don't really think it's going to come out anymore today this has been here since 1874. that's quite a few years of growth on it well it's still just a little bit just a little bit of time here get another rinse off here i don't think we're gonna get any better than that today and that's still a whole lot better than it was oh look at this slide over here look at the stuff just running down it yep [Applause] there you go that's all rinsed off so what we're gonna do i'm gonna go ahead and retreat all of these before we leave here today and then come back in a week or so and check on the the d2 progress but a heck of a change over here from what was covered in moss and couldn't be read to you can actually see it clearly now that's a little willy plus little willy little willy's the best best one out here that one looks so much better and of course james henry bird cleaned up real well there then you actually need george too with easer so that's a good that's a good product it is and i think it's um they said it says this isn't i gotta throw this out this isn't any kind of paid promotion i paid for this out of own pocket i wanted to do this but this is no scrubbing necessary it removes stains from mold mildew algae lichens and air pollutants and there's the no scrub method using a spray here wet the entire surface allow it to air dry d2 works with the elements and results occur within one week to several months depending on the severity of the stain reapply when needed apply d2 with a brush roller or sprayer this is the immediate results method here is the other method allow it to work on the surface for five to ten minutes apply additional d2 to maintain a wet surface we didn't do that let's grab the surface thoroughly with non-metallic and then rinse clean so there we go that's how you do it we might have cleaned it a little bit better if we kept spraying this on there while we were scrubbing but we're just going to spray it back down we're going to go with the no scrub method now and then check it in a week and i almost guarantee they're going to look a whole lot better put that on another quick coat do a little bit more look at george archer's grave is really now driving out look at that wow this is the this is happening right before our eyes yeah yeah this is right before our eyes hey got a good picture of it because yeah that one is is this drying it's looking real good you

Channel: Sidestep: Adventures Into History

Views: 270,568

Keywords: insider, veteran, headstone, clean, d/2, d/2 biological solution, trae zipperer, honor your dna, by memorial day, cemetery, headstone cleaning, monument cleaning, clean a headstone, granite marker cleaning, headstone cleaning tutorial, grave marker cleaning tutorial, monument cleaning tutorial, how to clean a headstone, how to clean a grave marker, step by step headstone cleaning, step by step granite monument cleaning, national grave care, gravestone cleaning

Id: 3uRlH3dMC18

Length: 31min 44sec (1904 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2022