Patina Hardware~A faux painting tutorial

Patina me this.....

If you have been following the blog lately, you know that I have been working diligently on doing my master bedroom makeover. I have worked on purchasing and painting used pieces of furniture, new bedding, painting a fabric upholstery chair, building a new upholstered headboard and various other bits and pieces to wow all you guys with this new look!

I'm super excited about all the progress (although it is going a little slower than expected), and I am a feeling a little impatient to get it all put together so I can show you guys what I've done. Nothing like a little suspense to make it all better, right? I will be showing you the refurbished version of the "new to me" dresser I found a few weeks ago in just a few days. This wood dresser is a monster at 79" long and normally I'm not a big fan of low 70's-ish stlye dressers, but I wanted a big statement piece and this fit the bill. I will show you the entire piece next week, but for now....this monster dresser has something very special being added to it! In the meantime, here is a look at the dresser before it was painted.

When refurbishing furniture, I often repaint the hardware. I paint the hardware either to compliment the paint color I am changing or just to make it look new and fresh. Although most of the pieces I buy to paint are in great shape and are solid wood pieces, they usually have pretty nasty hardware. Sometimes I will replace the hardware all together, especially if I want to change the look of the furniture or the style doesn't work with the existing piece.

The 'monster dresser' has awesome hardware in terms of its style. It is thick and chunky that really complimented the size of the piece. I even liked the natural patina that it had going, but it definitley needed to be cleaned up (it was really dirty, gross). But I figured by cleaning it thoroughly, it would also get rid of most of the natural patina. I really debated on what to do with this hardware because I wasn't crazy about the brassiness of the hardware once it was cleaned. I liked that it was aged looking and turning dark. My daughter even wanted me to leave the hardware like it was and don't clean it! :) But guys, I just couldn't leave them without washing them. It really would have grossed me out! So, I started thinking....I wonder if I could paint a "faux" patina on the hardware to achieve the same look without the brass but more of a copper color. Here is what the hardware looked like before I cleaned or started:

In coming up with a solution, the first thing I did was make a trip to Home Depot and scout out some paint. I found a Rustoleum spray paint called....Aged Metallic Rust. It is a orangy copper color that I just knew was going to be perfect. It was about $4. I took the hardware outside and spray painted all the hardware with the metallic rust color. It looked like this when I was done.

Next, I found a gray chalk paint that I already had used for another project. It is a Shermin Williams color called Black Fox. This is one of my favorite colors lately. It is a dark gray/brown that is just gorgeous on furniture. I don't think it will matter if it is made into chalk paint for this project, although if you want to make it chalk paint, you can find my recipe and tutorial here.

Here is a look at the color so that you can duplicate/match it if you have other gray paints to choose from in your house.

Once the hardware was dry from spray painting, I took a small artist brush and dabbed the black fox color over the copper hardware. Using a paper towel, I dabbed lightly at the surface, minimizing any heavier paint areas or brush strokes. You don't want full coverage but rather some of the copper color to come through. The gray will give the copper color that aged look.

After the black fox (gray) dries, which shouldn't take more than a few minutes if it is chalk paint. I used an acryllic paint in Coco Blue and Bahama Blue to paint the "patina". I used a small pen point brush to paint the blue in the areas where you would naturally see the patina (an aging and oxidizing effect of metal/copper). I wiped and dabbed at the blue to make it look natural so that it didn't pool or look too heavy in those areas. Here if the effect that I got with adding the blue paint.

You could easily do this for under $15 with purchasing the Shermin Wiliams paint in a sample size. And of course, you would have lots of paint left over to use for other projects that need some 'patina'. Honestly, I was so thrilled with how this turned out, that I started looking for projects that I could use this "Faux" Patina technique. I was a little crazed looking around my house for things to patina! Here is a sneak peek at the hardware on my newly painted dresser drawer (monster dresser re-do)! What do you think? Do you want to patina now too? :0)