12.21.2009

Cleaning painted hardware

I'm sure most of you that live in a "vintage" house have dealt with painted over hardware. Over the snowy weekend, I tackled a portion of our hardware collection.

I decided to use the slow-cooker/laundry detergent method to remove the paint and used the directions found on this Apartment Therapy post by Anna of Door Sixteen.

Here's how it went down...

small crockpot box

Purchased cheap-o crock pot at Aldi during snow storm of the century.

crock pot

Gathered offensive hardware.

painted hardware

hardware in crockpot
Let the hardware cook overnight. Um...yum?cooked hardware

Removed the hardware from the crock pot and peeled the softened paint off by the old chopstick and rag method.

hardware out of crockpot with paint

Ta da!

Cleaned up hardware

Labeled crock pot for good not evil purposes.
labeled crock pot

The door hardware still isn't perfectly clean. Dear readers, is there a way to shine them up a little more? Or do I put them in for another round in the crock pot?

4 comments:

  1. Lisa! How very small world! Love the blog, its very you.

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  2. I vote for giving the crock pot another try, to loosen up the rest of the paint. As for shininess? Not sure.

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  3. When I was in high school, I took jewelry (the girls' school version of shop class) and before and after we would solder something, we'd pickle it in a crock pot with a warm, weak acid solution. Here's a web page with more information about pickling.

    http://jewelrymaking.about.com/od/solderinginformation/a/032806.htm

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  4. Thanks wolf biter. I'll take a look at that!

    ReplyDelete