Mission Restoration Hardware

While working on making Leighton a headboard for his room today we removed some hardware from the door we were working on. After getting it off we both really liked the look of the back of it, but the front and sides of it was covered in paint.  We both remembered an episode of This Old House where they talked about getting paint off of hardware by boiling water and putting baking soda in it. Thought that this would be the perfect time to give it a try!  

After looking in my cabinet I realized that I had used all the baking soda in my house cleaning.  So I thought that I would try it with baking powder.  

I started the pot to boil and dropped it in, after awhile I went to check on it to see if I had made any progress.  It was starting to fall off, but let me tell you the water smelled BAD!  It was like boiling dirt, and I am sure that years of dirt was coming off in the water with it.

I dumped my water and put fresh in the pan and started it all over again (I was hoping the fresh water would help with the dirty smell, and it did).  After it boiled a little longer, I scrubbed on it with an SOS pad and it worked.

This is the before and after of it, the SOS pad and the old paint kind of wore some of the finish off of that side, and though it looks good in the picture painted, it did NOT when you were looking at it.  Considering this is not the side that I am going to use, it did do the job in getting the paint off the sides of it.  

This is the backside that attracted us to the original finish and protected from being up against the wood of the door for all those years!  I have just the project in mind for this!