Goodbye brass doorknob

Our house is fairly new. It wasn't brand new but its under 15 years old. It came with the wonderful brass doorknobs. I've meant to tackle this project a long time ago but was somewhat intimidated by it. It seemed like a big project to me for some reason. The last few days its been really hot so I have been able to work on simpler indoor house projects. Well.. this project wasn't as bad as I had expected in my head.

Supplies that I used:

Rustoleum metallic spray paint $8 at Homedepot
Windex to clean the door knobs
plastic drop cloth
flat head screwdriver
Cordless mechanical screwdriver


Steps:

1. Go to home depot and gather all necessary supplies. I bought the rustoleum spray paint. I already had the plastic drop cloth and other supplies.


On the bottle it states it adheres to wood, metal, plastic, and masonry.. ...  they forgot to mention skin. I got some on my arm and it really won't come off no matter how much I scrub.

2. Remove all door knobs with screwdriver. I used a flat head screwdriver to remove some of the door knobs that were stuck onto the door. Remember to label each door knob to which door it belongs. I made sure to label them with masking tape before moving onto the next door knob. See picture below. As mentioned earlier, it was too hot to paint outside so I laid a plastic drop cloth in our spare guest bedroom and made that my new workstation.  I didn't take the hinges off the door because it was already white.

3.  After removing all the door knobs in your house, spray everything down lightly with Windex. 

Our door knobs were kinda dusty and some had a little bit of paint on them. I sprayed Windex on them to have a cleaner surface to work on. I didn't sand the door knobs because I'm lazy. I've refinished our dressers knobs and its working just fine so I'm hoping our door knobs will work fine too. I sprayed two light coats over my door knobs and waited a whole day before reattaching them to the doors. 

Review: This project was actually pretty easy and went fairly quickly. Removal of all doorknobs in my house took about 45 minutes with the mechanical screwdriver. I did it by myself with no problems. It started to get heavy towards the end but nothing worth mentioning. I feel this project really makes our home feel a little more complete and polished because the brass stood out like a sore thumb. Our home has dark furniture/cabinets so the dark bronze really blends in well. Its one of those details that really makes a difference. 

Here are the before and after pictures. 

 I still have the front door to refinish. I might just tape around it and refinish it on the spot so I don't have to stay home all day. This was a nice little upgrade for our home for under $10.