Undomestic Bliss

One of the slowly maddening fun things about owning a home is all the little projects. You know, the details that probably no one else notices but that you see every, single day. When we bought our house, everyone gave us the very reasonable advice that we shouldn't try to do everything at once and to prioritize projects." The first month in our place was really overwhelming. But we tackled some big projects that absolutely had to be done first and then sat down and see what our next priorities would be. "That's easy," I said, "It should be things that will make the house more comfortable to live in." It probably shouldn't be, say, disassembling all the doors and stripping the hardware off of them because the previous owners painted over them. Now, many people probably have no problem with the door hinges being painted over, especially, in an old house like this. That's totally fine and probably a lot more logical. But the ironic perfectionist part of me, the part that nitpicks details like this and yet is content to leave piles of clean laundry piled on the bed for days on end before folding them, would not let this rest.

So before I started ripping all the doors off the hinges, I wanted to do a test run. I chose the built-in cabinet in our bathroom.

Sorry for the weird angle, I was standing in my shower. This thing is pretty neat and I'm fairly certain it's original to the house. I can't imagine someone installing wooden furniture in a bathroom after modern showers came about. This thing has approximately 120 coats of paint on it, so I think it should be pretty well protected. The paint may protect the wood but it made it almost impossible to get those handles unscrewed. I tried the ol' hammering the screwdriver into the screw trick, but there was way too much paint. Basically, I completely stripped and destroyed all the screws. Because I wasn't sure how old this paint was, I made sure to clean up any little pieces that fell off, in case they contain lead. 

Now, for the fun part. I took all the hardware and dumped it in a mostly full crock pot with about three tablespoons of laundry detergent. I set in on High and let it cook while I was at work. When I came home I had a delicious hardware stew! Just kidding, it's pretty gross what all came off of those things. But amazingly, the water and detergent worked to break the bond of the paint to the metal. 

Here's a tip: Use tongs to remove a piece at a time. Then let it sit for a minute to cool. Don't jump right in and start handling it and then burn your fingers like I did. 

For the most part, I could peel the paint off by hand. But for the more stubborn pieces I used a tiny, grout brush. I wouldn't recommend a wire brush. Depending on the metal, it may scratch it. 

Now, if you're lucky, you'll find a beautiful-looking, metal handle underneath all that paint. But if you're me, you'll find a seriously ugly handle, that no amount of Tarn-X will fix. 

The original plan was to just rub some bee's wax on them to protect them from moisture in the bathroom and put them back up. The latches actually looked alright but something had to be done about those handles. 

As always, the goal of these projects is to find the quickest and cheapest way to get something done, that also isn't going to need to be redone right away. So, I turned to my old friend, Rust-Oleum and just spray painted them. Then I covered them in a couple of coats of clear, spray enamel. Obviously, some of it is going to get scraped off on the latches as we use them. Finding new screws was also an issue because apparently Lowe's doesn't make them in old-timey handle size anymore. So we just had to get the closet thing available. 

So yeah, they aren't perfect but I like the overall effect. Plus, now I know how to tackle all the door hinges!