Refinished Doorknobs

When we bought our house 8 years ago, its came with brass everything.  Light fixtures, door stops, and handles. Not that there's anything wrong with brass, but it's just not for me.

Have you ever looked at how much door knobs cost? Even for the standard ones we had were a lot. And it seemed so...unimportant and impractical to replace all of our doorknobs in the house.  We have updated the lighting in the house over the years and are now completely brass free since painting the exterior of the house, but the door knobs were still brass. I really like the look of brushed silver, so we went with that. It matches all of our interior fixtures too.

Well, I got to thinking, why couldn't I spray paint them the color I wanted? My husband was skeptical at first because door knobs are so handled, but I explained to him that the kind of paint I was going to get is just the stuff for the job!

  It has primer in it, can be sprayed on wood, metal and even plastic and sprays at any angle.  I bought several cans at Lowe's and got right to work.

Unscrew all of the hardware on your door. It's tedious, but make sure you do all of the pieces that you want covered so that it looks uniform and made that way including the screws. Also, keep the pieces together so you know what goes with what when its time to assemble again.

After the first few, I got smart and started doing them assembly line style in groups.

The key to this project is steel wool. Make sure you scuff up your door knobs with the steel wool to give it a good surface for the paint to stick to. I did some without the steel wool and while it did the job, I feel like the process went better with the scuffed up door knobs. 

Also, do several light coats, rather than fewer heavy coats. It eliminates clumps, streaks and runs. 

 Although I didn't do these door knobs where I usually do, I recommend if you DIY and spray paint a lot, to have a painting station set up. We have one set up on the side of our house with an old table. The sun is only directly shining in the morning and it blocks a lot of wind. It's an old out door table with a hole in the center, which I often use to stand things up with as I am painting)

Be patient! Make sure the light coats dry in between coverages, and make sure you get all angles. Nothing is worse than getting your door knob all back together and seeing a brass spot in an awkward angle that you missed. Don't touch them until they are dry! You don't want to leave your finger prints in them.

When I put the first few back, I did some of them a little backwards and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't shut right. Trial and error. I would take a picture of it so you have a reference.

I did everything on the doors that were brass, and then bought new door stoppers in silver. You could reuse them, but ours were so bent up and needing replaced, for .98 each, it looked best this way. Plus, we no longer have crawlers who enjoy taking the white caps off and playing with them!

It really perks up the house in such a subtle way for next to nothing! Now we really need to repaint the doors and trim. They are desperately needing it!

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