DIY Brass Painted Kitchen Hardware

Hello Friends!

I wanted to share a quick DIY I did recently that has made a huge impact in our builder-grade kitchen! I’ve been wanting to swap out our brushed nickel kitchen hardware ever since we bought this brass faucet a few months ago. But with all of our cabinets and drawers, we have a total of 28 handles and I did not want to spend that kind of money for this update!

I had seen a couple variations of this project online, but it took me a while to find the exact colour I wanted, and combination of spray paint types to make sure the handles didn’t chip. I had read that a lot of people who had just pray painted their hardware found that it started chipping after a few weeks, so I knew I needed to be more thorough so I didn’t have to paint all 28 handles again.

SUPPLIES

• Hardware
• All purpose cleaner + a cloth
• Sanding block or sandpaper
• Scrap Cardboard
• Any type of Screwdriver
• Spray Primer
• Brass Spray Paint – I used this one
• Spray gloss top coat

STEP 1: PREP YOUR HARDWARE

To make sure everything sticks well to your hardware, you need to prepare it to be painted. If your hardware is new, you can probably skip the cleaning step, but mine was all greasy from just being in the kitchen so I sprayed it with all purpose cleaner and wiped it off with a cloth and dried it.

The second prep part is optional, but for optimal paint-sticking, I recommend giving your hardware a quick sanding with sandpaper or a sanding block. It doesn’t change the finished texture of your hardware, but it does allow the primer and paint to stick more easily. I just did a rough sand with 120 grit sandpaper all over the handles and then wiped them down again before doing anything else.

STEP 2: SET UP YOUR WORKSPACE

I wish I remember where I first saw this technique, because it’s genius, but you can easily make a hardware painting station out of a piece of cardboard! Just take the scrap cardboard and poke holes in it with a screwdriver and pop the screws that are attached to your handles into the holes. This allows them to sit up above the screws so you can easily paint every surface and not have them touch the cardboard. This took a little while to set up for all of my pulls, but it was definitely worth it!

STEP 3: APPLY THE PRIMER

I think a lot of people skip this step when painting hardware, but it definitely helps the spray paint stick to the metal. You don’t need to do more than one coat, but spray from a distance using quick sprays so it goes on evenly! Let your primer dry (for whatever time it says on the can) before moving onto the brass.

STEP 4: APPLY THE BRASS SPRAY PAINT

Now it’s time for the Brass! There are a million different gold/brass spray paint colours out there, but this one worked best for us because it matched our faucet perfectly. This colour was a recommendation from Megan at Copper & Gold Project! She’s a furniture-refinishing queen!

I recommend testing the colour on something first before you go too crazy – just in case you don’t like it! I tested it out on an old aluminum tray and held it up next to the faucet before applying it to my hardware.

For this step, I did two coats of spray paint to make sure it was on there evenly, and to cover up all of the primer. For the number of handles I had, I ended up using just over 2 cans of spray paint. It started to look so good, but don’t stop at this step!

STEP 5: APPLY THE TOP COAT

I was a little worried once the brass coats were dry, because the handles felt super textured when I touched them, and you could definitely tell they were painted! But once I applied the semi-gloss top-coat, they felt like they did before I painted them and just looked more finished. I did two coats of the gloss, because it was hard to get to the bottom of the handles. So for the first coat, I sprayed as much as I could on the hardware – and the second coat I held the handles from one of the screws and sprayed the bottom of the handle before putting it back into the cardboard to dry.

And there you go! Seriously a high impact project for a low cost, and it was super easy to do!

I’ll update this post if anything starts chipping, but it’s been a few weeks and the handles are holding up nicely!

10/10 would recommend painting your kitchen hardware!

Cheers,

Julie