Gold Hardware Hack

Do you want that antique brass, golden, West Elm look throughout your home but have an IKEA budget? I felt the same way and I’m going to show you how I accomplished this look.

For years I shopped at West Elm and CB2. Those were my go to stores for modern furniture and home decor. While the prices are much more affordable than some of the bigger stores out there, my budget has changed drastically since adding a new bundle of joy to the family. I still shop at West Elm and CB2 when possible but I try to find more budget friendly options these days. In this tutorial, I will explain how I achieved the golden brassy look for under $15! Below are pictures of my finished product.

The silver items that were in my Master Suite just didn’t match the aesthetics that I was going for in the update to my bedroom. Instead of buying new hardware for my dresser and spending hundreds of dollars on curtain rods like this, I decided to try a DIY hack.

For this hack you will need:

• Rust-oleum Metallic gold spray paint
• Rust-oleum Universal Clear durable Topcoat spray paint
• Newspaper, plastic tarp, or something to spray paint your items on that will protect your driveway or yard
• Latex glove (or suitable nonallergic glove)
• Sandpaper to sand the items to give the paint something to stick to
• Your curtain rod parts, handles from your dresser or any hardware that you want to spray gold. Note: For this hack, I purchased the $4.99 Hugad curtain rod from Ikea. The Betydlig wall/ceiling brackets and end caps are sold separately. Your total should be less than $15.

Remove the hardware from your dresser. The handles on my dresser came off very easy with my power drill.

Make sure that the handles are clean so that the paint doesn’t have any problems sticking to the hardware. You can also sandpaper these items. I didn’t sandpaper mine but I probably should have. Don’t be like Crystal.

In your back yard, or in a well ventilated space, spray all of the hardware from your dresser, curtain rod, etc gold while wearing a protective glove on the opposite hand with the spray paint. The idea is that you want to be able to flip or move the handles if they fall over with this hand protected from paint.

Avoid spraying layers and layers of paint. Over-spraying will look drippy and delay your drying time. Think of nail polish with a million layers. You will be so annoyed that you will just want to sand off all the paint and start over. Trust me, I did that.

Allow your hardware to dry for 1-24 hours. The more drying time, the better. I sprayed my items on the back porch on a hot sunny day for optimal drying time. When those handles dry, flip them over with the glove on your hand and spray a nice even coat on the other side.

Once super dry, repeat the same spraying method with your clear protectant coat of Rust-oleum. Again, think of painting your nails. When I get my toes painted, I don’t wear closed toe shoes for at least 24 hours because that’s how long it takes for the paint to dry. With your hardware, you want each layer to be super dry, otherwise you are just delaying your drying time. You don’t want thumbprints on your spray painted items. Trust me, that will happen if you don’t allow these items to fully dry.

After 24 hours of drying time, you can add the handles back to your dresser and begin hanging your curtain rod.

I really love the way this project turned out and I hope you have great results too.

Next up is mounting this TV back onto the wall and possibly painting this dresser white or a light grey color. I took the TV down to the paint the walls white and plan to hang it up this week.

Please share your results if you decide to take on this project. This project was very simple and easy. I don’t consider myself a DIY person but I think I will try a few more projects after gaining the confidence from this one.