ORBing it...

I had asked the builder once or twice about not having brass door knobs in the house.  I assume he has other things on his mind that are more important...like actually finishing our house some day...because I noticed a big old box of these guys last week when I was at the house...

I'm just not a fan.  No offense to anyone that has them.  It's just not my style.  So I've seen them spray painted in about 100 blogs so I decided to give it a try.  I didn't sand.  I just wiped down and stuck them into some cardboard that we had.  1 1/2 cans of Rustolium Oil Rubbed Bronze (ORB) with primer later I had this scene..

I sprayed every part of the handle including the door catches and screw heads.  I assume the door catches will get scratched up and might need to be replaced...but I figured nothing was lost on this project and it was worth spraying them now and replacing them later as necessary.  Since all of the doors are already hung in the house...I am going to need to replace all of the brass hinges.  I read in one of the blogs that I follow that the hinges don't hold up well after being sprayed so I can just pick up bronze ones at the hardware store at some point. 

All was going well until it started raining.  I was able to drag the cardboard into the garage but suffered some casualties.  Most of the handles have little water marks on them now and a few rolled off the cardboard and have scratches.  See what happens when I don't do things in your barn Dad???  Hopefully the second coat of paint will fix this...  I plan on doing a second coat to cover the the mistakes and the under parts of the knobs. 

So even though the hinges will be a different color for now...I think these will look great on all the doors.  Ohh...and if anyone is wondering...we have 27 doors in the house.  Any volunteers for helping me replace all of the hinges????