From Pink to Chic: Updating Our Bathroom's Window Hardware

Another small detail update we made to the half bathroom downstairs while tackling painting the walls was taking care of a really little thing that always kind of bugged me every time I’d go into the room — changing out the pink crackle-textured finials on the window hardware that came with the house...  

(Tim here: Never even noticed them. They came with the house?)

Down the road, we’d like to try something completely different for the window treatments in this room, but for now it suits our needs just fine — save for the fact those pink finials drove me crazy since I just felt like they clashed a little with the overall feel of the room rather than blending.

When we took the curtains down to wash them and clear the room for painting, it suddenly dawned on me what I wanted to do to take care of those pink knobs once and for all.

I realized they easily unscrewed from the rest of the holdback hardware in place on the window, so I popped those suckers off, washed them and dried them really well and took them out back to give them a little makeover.

I still had a small amount of the Krylon Looking Glass Spray I’d used to make a bunch of glass votives and jars look like they have a mercury glass finish, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to try the spray on these knobs just to see what would happen.  I convinced myself that if things went terribly wrong I could simply find some new screw-on knobs to replace them with.

I just placed the knobs on newspaper and gave them a few layers of really thin and even coats of the Looking Glass spray — here’s what they looked like as I continued to build up the layers:

And after about 3 layers and dry time, they finished up so nicely:

The end result actually came out a little better than I’d hoped for — the knobs really seem to take on that weathered mercury glass feel that I love so much.

Side note: find more glass objects I’ve coated in a faux mercury glass finish with the full tutorial for how to do so in this post.

Once they completely dried and cured, I brought them inside to twist back in place:

They screwed right back into the remaining hardware and just blended seamlessly into the look and feel of the rest of the brushed nickel looking hardware and fixtures we’ve got going on in this room. I love them so much better now that they blend in with the overall feel of the room rather than sticking out like a pink sore thumb.

I found this similar pair of window tiebacks with mercury glass finials to the tune of $50 from Restoration Hardware:

 ...so I'm feeling pretty good about being able to DIY a similar look!

Here's the side by side before and after:

 

It’s funny how small little updates like fixing the lights or a coat of spray paint can make such a difference — have you tackled any smallish updates around your space lately that just make you smile every time you see them?