French Door Hinges

Finally, the last couple of weekends, I've been able to get some projects finished.  I had several busy weekends and that along with the horrible heat, I wasn't able to or felt like getting anything accomplished as far as projects go.  But, I finally got 2 projects done that have been on my list for awhile.  I'll put them in 2 separate posts to make it easier to look at.

French door hinges
The hinges on my french doors & sidelites were brass.  The sidelites open and the knobs are also brass.  They really stick out and have been bothering me since I bought this house 2 years ago.

Way back when I first bought my house, I had looked into buying new knobs for the sidelites, but it was too hard to find the exact ones that fit.  Also, I didn't really want to spend the money on replacing the hinges.   I got the idea to spray paint all the hinges and knobs, but had procrastinated because I was worried about taking the doors down because I thought it might be difficult to get them back on by myself.  I talked to my dad about it and he had a great idea - just do one hinge at a time and this way the other 2 hinges will still hold up the door (duh!).  Brilliant!
So, I took one hinge off of each door at a time.

And put the screws into cardboard.

And sprayed away.  I used Rustoleum's Metallic Satin Nickel.

(Don't mind the Ninja Turtle in the background.  He came with the house and I never got rid of him.  He seems to be my project mascot)

This is the paint I already had at home.  It had a bit of a sparkle to it.   It worked out fine, but I would have rather had a non-metallic one in Nickel to eliminate the "sparkle".  They look way better now.

BEFORE

AFTER

It took about 3 full days to get this done.  I used 1 full day per hinge set because I wanted to make sure that they got lots of drying time (so they wouldn't stick to the doors or to themselves).  It was totally worth it to take the time to do this - that brass doesn't jump out at me anymore.
I didn't do the sidelite knobs yet - not sure why, since I had time.  I'll tackle that next weekend when I have a full day to let them dry.   I did check and they are really easy to take off and on (I thought that they would be more difficult), so it should be easy peasy.