Cleaning gas fireplace glass

Hey hey! It’s another cool day here in Indiana! This weather is my jam. It’s about that time of year to turn on the fireplaces – in fact we’ve already had the family room going at night a couple times. Gas fireplaces are wonderful – we’ve had a wood burning one before (in an apartment if you can believe it!) and it was great but the convenience of gas can’t be beat.
So I learned this trick on how to clean the fireplace glass years ago and it comes in SO handy, especially this time of year. I always clean the glass in early fall before we light the fireplaces for the season. I’ve been meaning to show you this for years!
Of course this little tutorial is how you clean the inside of the glass on a gas fireplace – not the outside. I figure that’s pretty self explanatory. :) It’s not hard to do at all and just takes a few steps:
I don’t know how the inside gets so yucky over the summer but every year it needs to be cleaned. The family room fireplace especially needed it after all the construction dust recently: 

Seriously, it was a mess.
OK, first step is to make sure the pilot light is off! I don’t think it’s a big deal to open it up with it on but since you’ll be cleaning the glass and all, I recommend you just have it off.
To start you’ll tilt down the bottom grate like so:

This one I can’t remove unless I unscrew it, but it does give me access to the back side so I can clean the grates easier.
Inside and underneath on both sides of the firebox are two clamps. You’ll need to bend down and find them and then you just release the clamp:

Do this on both sides. This releases the glass front of the fireplace. It will tilt out from the bottom:

And then you can pull up on the whole piece of glass and just pull it off. The whole thing has a cleat at the top that sits under the upper grates:

So if you just pull up on the glass it should come off very easily. Be careful, it’s heavier than you think it will be but totally manageable.
You can also unhook the top grate if you want too:

You can do that with or without the glass installed – it makes it easy to clean in the sink or at the hose outside.

You’ll want to lay the glass front side down so you can clean it. I try to use something without a ton of chemicals – I’m sure anything would probably be OK but I just worry about the chemicals with the gas/fire. You know, explosions and stuff. No biggie:

 

I use my Shaklee cleaner and it works great!
While I’m at it with everything opened up I’ll clean out underneath the fireplace a little and then replace the embers inside. Those are the fluffy stuff at the bottom -- you can see that after time they get kind of brown and yucky: 

I found this bag of the embers at Lowe’s or Home Depot years ago and it’s lasted me a long time. I don’t replace all of them, just the ones on top:

It makes a big difference when lit – lots of glow:

When you’re done cleaning the glass just hook that top cleat back on to the firebox, then you’ll need to clamp everything back in:

You’ll have to push hard to them secured but again, it’s not hard at all.
When you’re done you’ll have a clean, sparkling fireplace!:

Ours was a mess – the glass, the grates, everything was dirty from all the dust we’ve had around here. It’s nice to have it all finished up and looking good now!:

If you missed how I installed that herringbone tile you can catch up here.
If you have a gas fireplace did you know how to clean this glass? I had no idea till a friend showed us how to do it. It’s SUPER easy to do and it will take you about 10-15 minutes start to finish. I don’t know if these steps will work for every gas fireplace, but I’m betting they are all fairly similar.
I’ll show you a couple other quick tips to get your fireplace looking brand new again next week!

Here's an image to pin if you'd like to try this project later!