Down With O.R.B. (Ya You Know Me)

So in buying an older home comes mismatched, well, almost everything. We have some original doors (front door, bathroom and guest bedroom and office closets) and some builder grade 6 panel doors (guest bedroom and office) and some kind of rando doors (master bedroom and bathroom). We also have quite the assortment of doorknobs and hardware. Most are brass, one is pewter, and one is even brass on one side and silver on the other (fancy!). Needless to say I needed to get some consistency going on so what did I turn to....? My trusty friend ORB (aka, oil rubbed bronze).

                   Office Door                                               Master Bathroom Door


We started by taking off all the hardware and tried our best to keep everything together (we ended up having to do some trial and error with some knobs and screws). Then we sanded a bit with 320 grit sandpaper just to get the shine off a bit. Now don't freak out - it scratches the knobs a bit and will look weird, but I think it helps the ORB stick better and once ours dried there were no scratch marks or rough surfaces.

We had to kind of make up our own system of how we were going to get the knobs to stand up right to prevent drips (and to try and get full coverage on the first spray - didn't happen BTW). So here are some knobs that we stuck into a paper bag which we sat around a couple cans of paint to give it stability. It worked perfectly!

This was how we laid out the other end of the knob (the flat side) and this is with the first coat of ORB. The knobs only needed more then one coat because I didn't get enough coverage on the first or second try - but if you're a more thorough spray painter then you will probs only need one coat. We also ORB-ed the lock plate (?) - that part that's on the door frame - as well as the screws that hold it all in so everything would match. 

And here are the knobs all back in place. The one on the left is the hallway bathroom door and the one on the right is our master bathroom door. You can see the that metal piece in the door frame matches nicely, but the piece in the center is painted over and was not wanting to come off. I think I'll have to work on it later. 

So the moral of this story is that I still love ORB. And having this tone across the house is really a lot better then the brass. You don't realize how much a door can throw off an entire room until it blends in better. Now on to those silver kitchen and hall bath cabinet pulls...who's down with O.R.B.