Mid-South Gardening: September: Is summer over??, 2 by cperdue

cperdue wrote:
Genna there are all kind of tricks you can do with furniture hardware. I had a very inexpensive tv stand that I decide to give a new life. (It's something I'm selling not for my house). I painted it black and decided to update the hardware. If you are doing something for personal use you don't mind spending money for new hardware but when you're doing it for resale every dollar counts. If I replace all hardware I can end up going in the hole on a piece. I bought two knobs at Hobby Lobby at 1/2 price. They were 3.99 each so I paid 3.99 for the 2 of them. It had the standard looking brass pull and backplate on it. All brass hardware (or at least the ones in recent years) have a plastic coating on them to keep them from tarnishing. I boiled the backplates in hot water until the plastic had loosened enough to scrub it off with a scrubby. They make an antiquing solution (I've had mine for over 20 years). I just put my backplates in a plastic container and poured enough solution over them to cover (you can use the solution over again) and let it sit until they got as dark as I wanted them. Just a minute or so. Now they blend with my new knob which has dark brass on it. I sometimes paint metal hardware and then use a sponge sanding pad to take a lot of the paint off. The pictures came out in reverse order. First is the final product, 2nd in the solution and 3 before any solution.
I would have just left the back plate off but I realized there was a small hole in each door that had to do with the back plate. That's why I had to figure out how to make them blend in.

This message was edited Sep 2, 2014 1:24 PM