Tutorial: Oil Rubbed Bronze Finish

Since we built our house we were able to choose the finishes throughout.
For all of our metal finishes we chose oil-rubbed bronze.
It's the trend right now.
That being said, I try to stay away from trends that I think are a fad and will date a look.
Think "that is soo 80s".
I think oil rubbed bronze has the potential to look classy, even 10-20 years down the road, which is why I chose it in spite of it being the trend.

Slight problem, a lot of our metal accessories happened to be not oil rubbed bronze.

I fixed some of them, here's how:

First, I spray painted the finishes this brown color.
The can said that it was a "hammered" finish, but it looks pretty smooth to me, pretty puzzling as I've used this stuff before and its always gone to the finish shown on the spray paint cap. Oh well, I was happy with a smooth finish for this project anyways.

The paper towel holder was previously white and the toilet paper holders were a dark satin nickel. Yeah, I pulled my typical dig-right-in-and-forget-the-before-picture thing.

I have almost a full quart of black paint from this project I did in our Murray home, and I have a quart of faux finish glaze from the loft project at this house.

I just took a couple spoonfuls of each and mixed them in a paper cup.
Even with just mixing this little bit I had a ton left over. A little bit goes a long way.

Then I took my small stippling brush and tapped on the black glaze until I liked the look of it.
*Tip: the dark glaze will look much lighter than it should until it dries, don't worry...it looks good when it is done.

Part way through the treatment.

Final product.
So, it looks way better in real life. The flash makes the undercoat and the black glaze look very different giving a splotchy effect, but the difference is actually much more subtle and good looking.

These shower hooks were shiny, shiny chrome.

Now most of the stuff is matchy matchy and pretty.
Just don't look too closely at the shower curtain, I need to iron it.
(Stace I think of you every time I look at this, great wedding gift)
I'm sure I'll find more things to do this finish on as we go along.