Gold Be Gone

Hold on to your hats!

I am about to show you the MOST BEAUTIFUL sight I have EVER SEEN! Are you ready? Here it is:

The reason this is SO beautiful? Is because these gold/brass ugly door knobs are no longer on my doors!!! I cannot tell you how happy this picture makes me! Oh what bliss!

So--the story goes that besides being REPULSINGLY UGLY--these knobs were no longer functioning either. We pretty much had to break into our own house every time we locked the door--even though we had a key! It was pretty bad.

SO I was able to find some good deals on some pretty brushed silvery looking used door knobs at our local RE-use it store. Then I was lucky enough to find EXACT matches for the rest of the needed knobs at Home Depot! YAY!! So for a VERY reasonable price I was able to get all new knobs for all of our doors! Yippee!!

BUT now I had a problem.

I now had beautiful silvery knobs and BRIGHT BRASSY GOLD HINGES!!! So I looked at replacing them. Did you know those things are super expensive?! They are from $2.50-$5.00 a piece!! And each door needs three!!

SO--despite a lot of peoples misgivings--I turned to my new found best friend: Spray Paint.

I found a color that was a good match:

I tested it on an face plate I wasn't using--and was SUPER happy with the results. So I then went around to each door and took off only one hinge at a time. This way I didn't have to take off the whole door--I just did three rounds of spraying to finish the whole project.

Here are some of the awesome before and after pictures:

Yucky brass hinges awaiting their new look.

After a few coats of paint. Don't they look amazing?

Then--I had the problem of the screws--they were brass too. So I went and bought some new silver screws so I wouldn't have to paint the old ones. Only to not have them work out. SO I came up with this little box to hold all the screws so I could paint just the tops. It worked PERFECTLY and I saved the $8.25 on the new screws.

Here is a great one of a side by side. The old ones were so bad! They had paint (from previous owners not so careful paint jobs) and other scratches and gunk all over them!

But now I think they look great!

And they match the new knobs so well! I don't think anyone will ever know that they aren't the real thing. Oh, how I love you spray paint!




Besides the new knobs, this amazing makeover cost me just over $5
(the cost of one can of spray paint).




***Funny Side Note***
After completing this project and writing up this post--I stumbled across another AWESOME BLOG called Infarrantly Creative where this gal had already done this exact same project! AND SHE EVEN PAINTED HER DOOR KNOBS!!!

HERE is the link to her post--where she explains all of the steps she took and how it all turned out! She did a lot more prep/finish work (sanding/priming/and top coat) because she was doing the knobs as well. For my purposes (since I was only doing the hinges--because I NEEDED to replace my knobs--and hinges really don't get that much wear and tear) I only cleaned the hinges really well and painted them with a good quality paint.

What I thought was funny was how closely we did our projects--without even knowing it! She even made a little contraption to hold all her screws while she painted them--just like I did!