One thing is undeniable in the DIY and design world, brass hardware is back and lately I’m totally loving it on furniture. As a child of the 80’s I admit shiny lacquered brass fixtures still don’t appeal to me, but I am drawn to the golden glow of real or antiqued brass with its warmer patina. In the past two weeks, I’ve fixed up two pieces, one dresser and one campaign desk, and both had brass hardware I wanted to reuse. One set of hardware was real brass, the other brass plate, and both needed a good polish. Over the last year, I’ve also narrowed down two great substitutes for faking the patina with other hardware that you want to give a golden glow. If you’re curious how to tell the difference between real brass and brass plate, how to polish unlacquered brass, or how to fake the look of antique brass hardware, here’s how I do it. Real brass is an alloy of copper and zinc and if it’s not lacquered, will tarnish with exposure to air over time. There are two methods I use to bring back the mellow antiqued patina, one is Brasso if I have it on hand and the other is natural lemon juice and salt paste mixture.
But first, before you polish, you should know whether your hardware is real brass or brass plate. Here’s the simple way to tell the difference. Take a household magnet and see if it will stick to the piece, if it won’t that means the hardware is real brass, like these campaign pulls. However, if the magnet picks up the hardware, then it’s brass plated (with steel or iron as its base). Good old fashioned Brasso works well for cleaning off the tarnish, and I usually soak for about 20 to 30 minutes. With real brass, I use a rag or extra fine steel wool to remove the tarnish. You can also use a mixture of salt and lemon juice as a natural polish, use approximately ¼ cup of salt per squeeze of ½ lemon to make a paste. Either one works great on either brass plate or real brass, just be sure to use a soft rag or soft toothbrush with brass plate and not steel wool, it can scratch the thin brass plating. Lemon juice is acidic, so be sure to fully rinse and buff your brass hardware, and I’ve read that using a little olive oil on top will prolong the periods between polishing.
I find brass plated hardware is more stubborn for some reason and usually takes repeat soaks to bring it back to life but it can be done. But if your brass plate doesn’t come back to life because it’s too corroded or you want to give it the patina of unlacquered brass, there are two products that will do just that. Rub N’ Buff is a waxy metallic finish that comes in several golden shades such as Gold Leaf (depicted), but also look for Antique Gold and European Gold. Krylon’s ‘Gold Leaf’ is the best metallic gold spray paint I’ve found to date to mimic brass or give you a warm golden glow on your hardware. As you can see, both the Rub n’ Buff and Gold Leaf spray paint are pretty darn close to the real thing!Have you noticed the popularity of brass hardware on furniture lately? Are you liking its resurgence? Know any other natural formulas or products that are great for cleaning brass? Well thank you for the kind words yesterday! We are very excited.
I’m back with a DIY project I’ve been wanting to tackle for a long time. I mentioned a while back that my house had been finally been debrassified, but I was wrong. I had forgotten about a couple knobs in the house. But these were exterior door knobs that we use a key with – so replacing them meant two things: lots of $$ and since they are keyed don’t you have to make new keys when you install them? I always thought you did but maybe not. But still, lots of moola to replace two of them. I didn’t feel like spending lots of moola so I figured I’d try out a DIY to change them up. I’ve always wondered how spray painted knobs hold up and it’s the age old question – some say they do great, some say they do horribly. We’re about to find out. Well…in a few weeks/months anyway. I did a couple doors with varying uses/elements so it will be interesting to see how they turn out. But first, the how to. You take the offensive shiny thing off: Ignore the horrible, dirty mud room door.
Don’t be afraid to take the knob off – even I avoided this for years and it’s not a big deal. It's two pieces and the screws, that’s it. Just remember how they go back together and always remember the access to the screws side goes inside the room! First up, and I think this is most important part – clean them. I just used my basic cleaning stuff but anything that will get any grime or grease off is what you want: Thing is, if you don’t clean them well the primer and paint won’t hold well – you’ll get crackles (the dreaded crackle, shakes fist in air!!!!) or it will easily wear off those dirty areas. I took them out in the garage and needed something that would allow them to stand up, so I stuck the one with the long part into a shop towel cardboard box and just laid the other one on top: I later stuck the screws in there too – they stand up straight so you can spray all sides at once.I have some really good (and expensive stuff) called BIN primer in a spray.
But it’s a pain in the butt. I told you more about it here. I’ve tried everything to make it spray smoother but it just doesn’t work. This time my gloves and the can ended up covered in the primer:The paint sprayed all clumpy and gross too, so I actually had to sand down the knobs a bit to help that. I’m throwing the primer out, which is annoying cause it’s not cheap.I ended up just using a basic black primer instead: The BIN stuff is stronger, better primer, but I was tired of cussing so there you go. Don’t they already look so much better though? I finished up with my BFF…good old ORB (that’s oil rubbed bronze for those not tight with it):Good to see you again. When spray painting remember short, light coats – not long, heavy ones. There’s really not much to it if you remember that. I took the knob off the back door too and you can see the wear on the keyed side from being outside: So it will be interesting to see how these hold up – the mud room door is one we use a key on all the time, so that will get lots of wear and tear.
The back door we don’t use a key on much, but the outside part gets hit with the elements. And we use both doors numerous times a day. On the back door I took the knob off and did that first: I didn’t want to take both off just in case something went wrong. You know I don’t have much luck with that door. The deadbolt part was a little more tricky – we’ve been told we need to replace our whole back door (water issues) and every time I get inside there I see why. The insides of that one were rusted so it was hard to get the lock part off the outside part of the door. I just ended up spray painting the inside part. I also took the strike plate off and sprayed that, but I know it will get scratched up – it already is. Most of it should stay the ORB color though, so we’ll see how that holds up: I decided to makeover that mud room door so I can’t show you the after on that one just yet. But here’s how it looks on the back door: I can’t wait to show you how it looks on the mud room door!