Friday, April 10, 2009

My small dilemma.

I pulled down the hinges from the bedroom doors upstairs and stripped them. Stripping paint from hinges and pulls is very easy by the way. All you need to do put the hinges in a pot you don't plan on using again, fill the bottom of the pot with baking soda and simmer them for a half an hour. When you pull them out the paint just comes right off. It's not good to use stripper on metal as it is abrasive.

Ok, so onto my dilemma. The orginal hinges are copper underneath. I think they are pretty charming, however the rest of our hardware is brushed nickel. We are restoring the woodwork, in the house, but that's about it. We are updating almost everything. Do you think it would be weird if we kept the hinges copper and had silver everything else? I am thinking I may just give these guys a coat of metal spray paint.
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PS. Our dumpster is being delivered as I type this. Down with the ugly fence this weekend!
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3 comments:

Josh said...

Definitely keep those original hinges. The ball finials are a great authentic detail and the copper will age beautifully. If you want to match the finish, just paint these hinges. You've already demonstrated that the hinges could stripped again later by you or a future homeowner, if needed.

Ken Bloggins said...

This may not weird, but are you sure the hinges are copper. Using the same baking soda method, I have had metals turn all sorts of odd colors. I have used Maas polish on some of the hinges I stripped paint from. You could always polish a small area of the part that isn't visible once the hinge is on the door.

Domesticated said...

Josh- Good point, I went ahead and painted them this weekend and I am happy with the end result.

Eggs_gg- I scratched off some of the paint before I boiled them and saw copper. I used tarn-X after cleaning off the paint and they looked like a penny. I am pretty sure they re copper but you never know if someone has stripped them at some point in the past and it changed the metal.