Cleaning Paint Off Old Hardware

Our turn of the century Folk Victorian home needs some work to achieve her full beauty. One of the blemishes involves doors with 100+ year old hardware caked with layers of paint. It makes the doors look horrible. Instead of the hinges being removed before painting the doors or carefully painting around the hinges, everything was doused with layers of paint. It's a sad site. Poor old house!

However, after some research, I discovered a simple, nontoxic, affordable solution...a slow cooker. Not wanting to use one of my good slow cookers to remove old paint, I headed to my local Goodwill Store and picked up a used one for around $6. You can't beat that price!

Look at these beautiful 100 year old hinges! It was time to free them and let them shine!

How to remove the layers of paint:
​Simply cover your hinges in water and cook them on low for 6 hours in a slow cooker. The paint loosens by soaking in the hot water and most of it falls right off. I used an old toothbrush to clean off the little bits of paint that wanted to cling a little longer. (Please never use the slow cooker for food again or the toothbrush for teeth again and dispose of old paint carefully.) 

Here was the result! I also took an old rag and cleaned each hinge with Brasso to get any existing residue off. Brasso is usually available at your local hardware store.

This is the first door I've removed, painted (Sherwin Williams Pure White), cleaned hardware and reattached. The plan for most of the other doors is to be stripped and stained to match the floor. All of the hardware is caked with old paint which will need to be removed. I'm holding onto my old slow cooker and Brasso to work on more doors!