Holy Moly. When our trim carpenters took our doors out of the house to clean them up, I kind of thought they would also be cleaning up the hardware. They would have - they absolutely would have cleaned up the old hardware; buuuuuuuuuut we would need to pay for their time to do it. You know what is effectively free? My time! My time & my elbow grease are both quite free indeed.
So here we go.....My first idea was to soak the hardware in paint thinner. Paint thinner would soften/thin the paint and I could scrape/rub it off.
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| A relaxing bath of paint thinner for the hardware |
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| Just soaking away in the paint thinner |
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| I started with 4 trays to test out how it worked |
You might guess how it worked. It didn't. It didn't really touch the paint; it was not softened, it was not coming off - it was as though I had soaked the hardware in water! See for yourself:
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| Yeah. The paint is pretty much all still there. Paint thinner fail! |
I was not dissauded - I knew I would prevail over the paint - I just needed a new strategy! The new strategy was to strip. No, not taking off my clothes you weirdo - that would in no way help to get 110 years of paint off of the hardware! I used a soy based gel stripper made by Franmar on the paint. After letting it sit for 24 hours - this is what the paint looked like:
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| Do you see the bubbling? The paint is pulling itself off of the hardware! Or at least the top layer of paint is! |
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| Look at that paint - its basically falling off of this door hinge! |
I was so pleased to see how effective the stripper was on loosening/softening the paint. Now on to the scrubbing/scraping.
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| Before the stripper |
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| After the first 24 hours in stripper and some elbow grease scraping the softened paint off |
Time to do it again - more stripper; more scraping/picking/rubbing at copious amounts of paint.
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| Now, that is what I call green paint. Seriously, truly make an f-ing statement green paint. |
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| More hardware in progress.... |
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| Making serious progress after my 4th time letting the stripper sit for 24 hours and vigorously scraping the softened paint off. |
Now that I have the vast majority of the paint off; it is time to tackle the years of grimy build up on the unpainted pieces; plus shine everything. Next step was green scratchies (or scrubbies....what does your family call these?? They are indispensable! I used them with Bar Keeper's Friend to clean/shine all of the hardware. I worked really hard...so hard my arm muscles were twitching by the end. It was worth it though; check out the process & end results!
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| Top: after some serious scrubbing Bottom: post stripping, pre scrubbing |
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| 7 of the 9 sets after the scrubbing - all done! Now the trim carpenters need to install the doors so we can find homes for all of this hardware! |
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| Bar Keepers Friend is your friend if you have metal that needs TLC :) |
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| Done! Hooray! |
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| Yippee!! |
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| I won't lie - I'm happy this project is over! |
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| The fruits of many hours of scrubbing |
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| I dig the copper tone most of the hardware turned out to be |
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| So darn pretty |
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| There seems to be lots of different metals in play in each set of hardware; not sure why - but not offended by it either |
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| This came out of the "miscellaneous" bag of hardware - it doesn't match the style of anything else - I have no clue where the carpenters found it; but I like it |
As happy as I am that I did breathe some new life into this old hardware; I'm not sure if I'd sign up for all the work again! Hopefully it will all be worth it once the hardware is installed!
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