Gotta get down with ORB on Friday, Friday!

Friday! 

That's right, y'all. It's FRIDAY! In my case, it's the Friday before we start transforming our house and I am beyond excited about that. I don't love painting by any means, but if it means we can get rid of 50% of the tan/beige in this house, I am all for it. We are inviting friends and family over to help us paint so if any of you have a free morning and want to get some complimentary breakfast, come on over and we will find something for you to do! :) What do you all have planned for the first weekend in August?

I mentioned that I was working on two different projects at the house this week. The first was cleaning the grout (and I've received some other tips and tricks since posting that, so I will have to try them and get back with you!) and the second was/is painting all of the door hardware. I saw this first on YHL (duh) and was surprised I had never thought to do this. You simply spray paint the door handles in whatever finish you would like to make a huge impact without the huge investment of new handles. For our house, I chose ORB, also known as oil-rubbed bronze. I like the dark finish and I feel like they will go with any decor that I have without being too harsh, like black might be. 

Here is the tutorial from Young House Love, in case you'd like to read it. 

So most of the handles in our house are a nice 70's gold with the exception of the guest room, guest bath, and master bath. For the guest room and guest bath, the door knobs had been replaced with brushed nickel fixtures, which are nice. So instead of painting those rooms, I just took the knob that faced the hallway and sprayed that, so all of the door knobs in the hallway will match but the brushed nickel finish will stay in those rooms without interfering or feeling weird to the rest of the house. Also, the bathrooms had more nickel components like the towel rod, faucet, and toilet paper holder, so it makes more sense to leave that as-is. 

Here is a wide shot of before in our master bedroom showing the linen closet and main door knobs.

The first thing I did was to go around and take off all of door knobs that I wanted to paint. (I'm holding off on the front, back, and garage doors for a nice day when I can leave the doors open and paint the door and the knobs at the same time, since it takes a while for them to dry)

Then, I took a medium grit sand block (this is a foam block with sandpaper on the edges. I got mine at Wal-Mart) and sanded down the knob. See the difference below.

 The sanding is meant to take the sheen off of the handles and rough them up so paint will adhere to them. 

YHL's instructions were to then use a liquid deglosser to further prepare the knobs for paint, but I couldn't find that at Wal-Mart and I tend to get impatient so I just skipped that step. Hopefully my painted door knobs will still hold up for a while, but if not, I know why!

After they were sanded and brushed off, I took them out into the garage and put them on a piece of cardboard, ready to be sprayed.

I used Rustoleum ORB spray paint, found at Wal-Mart and did a light misting to cover the knobs.

I continued this about 5 times, and then I flipped them over (after they were dry and onto clean cardboard) to get the underside.

I did this all in one evening, so they could air out and dry to be ready for the next day.

And here they are, back on the linen closet after 24 hours of curing.

What do you think? Worth it?

We also plan to sand down and repaint this cabinet, but I think this change makes a HUGE difference on the appearance of the house. The gold handles just age our house more than we'd like. I love the change already!

Like I said, we didn't have a lot of time to work on things over just two evenings this week, so I haven't finished all of the knobs yet. I have taken all interior knobs off and began spraying, but I haven't finished or installed any back to their doors. Here is the same before picture and steps for the door knobs, though.

P.S., all of that dirt on the door was just that, simply dirt! I went around and wiped all the doors down and they already look a million times better. This was just another thing we noticed after the house was empty. 

This shows a sanded knob on the left and an untouched knob on the right.

I'll be back next week with finished photos of the knobs and hopefully some progress photos of the painting! Now, who wants to start a poll of when we will start moving in? 

Have a great weekend!