How to Clean, Prep & Paint Hardware

How to clean, prep and paint hardware.

Keep that Vintage Hardware

I’ve been working on a custom Thomasville piece for the past two weeks and the last step of the makeover was to paint the hardware.  We (my customer and myself) decided it was best to keep the original vintage hardware to the piece,  and why not? The old hardware is more often than not made very well, has great details, and often suits the piece perfectly.  Understandably there are cases where a piece requires new knobs and pulls and that’s ok too, but I am a huge fan of holding on to original hardware when possible.  I decided to do a step by step on my process. See all the projects with painted hardware here to see how often and easy it is, as well as different finishes that can be achieved on old hardware: Painted hardware

The Before

Here is a glimpse of the hardware taken right off the piece.  It has many years of dirt and grime but they are solid quality pulls. 

As you can see in the zoomed in photo, this hardware was pretty ‘icky’ BUT completely savable! With just a few simple steps you can prep and paint hardware and make it pretty again.

Cleaning

This next step hasn’t failed me yet when it comes to cleaning the layers of gunk off of old hardware.  All you need is a large pot, stove, and good old-fashioned baking soda. 

Drop your dirty hardware in a pot, heat it up and add some baking soda.

I don’t even measure how much I use..  I just dump some in..  If I had to guess it’s maybe around a half of a cup. 

I would suggest keeping an eye on the pot to make sure the bubbles don’t boil over. 

After around fifteen minutes you can drain the water, don’t be surprised by the nasty brown color it turns. Then with an old toothbrush, I give the hardware a scrub and rinse with clean water to remove the baking soda residue.

Once rinsed your hardware should be clean of the grime.

I should also mention that the top of your stove will have splatter marks that turn white when dry, so please make sure to clean the stove when finished.  My husband wants to kill me if I clean hardware and forget to wipe off the splatter. Since we have a black stove a simple wipe down can save a marriage. 

Prep

Next, I like to take a piece of sandpaper and scuff up the hardware.  By scuffing you will give the hardware a bit of tooth for the paint to grab a hold of.  

Make sure to wipe away any dust left on the hardware as a result of scuffing. 

Paint

Once your hardware is all ready you can paint.  For this project, in particular, we are making the hardware a matte black, so I started with a true black chalk type paint. You can find great paint options online HERE

You don’t have to worry about being super tidy with this step as you can see.  I probably got the same amount of paint on the paper plate as I did on the hardware.

Seal

Lastly, the hardware is sealed for protection.

Once I finish taking photos of the piece in its entirety I will be sure to come back and add them here. 

You can find multiple projects with painted hardware here: Painted Hardware Projects. 

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Disclosure: This how to paint hardware post contains affiliate links.