New Knobs

I’m loving the Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint, it’s covering the old door knobs smoothly and making them beautiful again! Again, the door knobs were working fine mechanically but were a tarnished gold that just wasn’t nice enough. Add in old owners who got paint on all the hardware and it was time for an updated look.

First step is to remove the handle using a phillips head screwdriver. Be careful of the inner mechanisms that are sometimes oiled.

Then use a small flat head screw driver to scrape off paint you can see here on the handle.

I rubbed each down with a bit of sandpaper to get rid of the last vestiges of paint.

Once the pieces are clean I set them up outside on a piece of cardboard, using the pieces to push through the cardboard:

Then using the spray paint I pass over each piece, about 8″ away, covering with a thin coat of paint. Just keep the spray can moving, even if you end up getting more paint on the cardboard. If you apply the paint too heavily it starts to run, ruining the smooth look.

A great tip from Young House Love was to poke the screws through the cardboard so they get painted as well.

I’ve also removed the strike plates and painted those. It typically takes 3-4 coats to cover the entire handle as I move it around to make sure each side is covered evenly. Be sure to move the locking mechanism back and forth between coats.

The result is so dark and sparkly and pretty:

and it takes just a few minutes to reinstall (see how the screws blend in so nicely?):

and line up the screws to reassemble the handles:

Next up is replacing the door hinges (eek!) so they match. The first can of ORB is still half full so this entire project has so far cost just $7.50, much cheaper than replacing the hardware with new.