And I don’t usually do perfect.
The first thing that needed to happen was to remove the clear varnish that was keeping the brass from tarnishing..I read that a little vinegar mixed with salt and applied with a scouring pad does the trick.
I’m not totally sure if it worked, but I did notice the finish becoming less shiny and yellowy and more raw looking.It was a bit of a lighter color as well.So it must have done something.. Next I rubbed the whole thing with a bit of sandpaper.
At first I felt like I was doing something terribly wrong, but in the aftermath, I see if really did help the look overall..So at this point it just looked like a scratched up, slightly lighter-colored 1993 brass door knob..
I read somewhere that heating the brass up with a flame would help it tarnish quickly..
I grabbed my candle lighter and got to firing that brass knob.. At a certain point it occurred to me that what I was actually doing was holding a flame up to a part of my beloved house and heating that part up more and more.. Um, no.. As usual, I didn’t want to wait to see the results of the natural tarnishing so I grabbed my trusty dollar store craft paints and did a little faux magic, instead of you know, setting my house aflame.. -Wipe on a dab of black everywhere, including in the nooks and crannies.It’s become kind of a community-use barn around here.
So we made our plan, gathered our barn wood, and then we got to building!We had to get this whole project completed in less than a weekend and I would say that, for the most part, a project like this would be considered a pretty reasonable thing to aim to accomplish in a weekend.
We built some extra trays, which might be pushing it a bit time-wise for the beginner DIYer, and I would suggest leaving the wood staining part for a separate weekend if it’s not something that you do often, because you want to do a really good job of finishing your work of art.Overall though, definitely a great project that makes a big impact visually and functionally, with a pretty simple process.. Here’s what we did!.