Cleaning Chrome

Almost two weeks ago I picked up a beautiful blond with curvy legs. OK, OK, so it was a mid-century blond maple table with beautiful chrome legs. I showed up at a random sale and the guy must have liked me (old guys tend to give “young” whipper-snappers like me who are crazy enough to be interested in old things lots of attention, and lots of deals), because he sold me his beloved table for $40. His friend who helped me remove the legs to fit in my car told me exactly how to remove the surface rust from the chrome legs, which he didn’t have to do, and I love learning new things. I had never cleaned rust off of anything before. Little did I know it is as easy as some coarse steel wool (he recommended 4x, but the highest they had at Home Depot was 3 and it worked great), a flat head screwdriver, some car wax and some elbow grease. I was amazed at how the steel wool erased the surface rust and really made these babies shine. I’ll be selling the table on Craigslist soon! Here are some before and after comparison shots. You can see the caked-up grime and rust on the feet and the spotting of the surface rust all over.

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Refinished Mid-Century Magazine Rack

I found this mid-century magazine rack at a garage sale. I saw it from the street as I drove by and the woman was anxious to get rid of it. I paid $1 for it. It was powder-coated black, had a little bit of surface rust and was missing one rubber foot. Here’s what I did.

After some sanding, the metal started to peek through the black powder coating.

And the sanded powder coating turned my hand into this.

I applied three coats of spray primer. Jovie was less than thrilled...

And then I applied three coats of aqua spray paint

I considered buying one of these spray paint guns and then found one in my workshop. Silly. It works great and definitely saves the finger.

I added new footers, which I found in the closet section of Home Depot. They were perfect!

Here's a reminder of the before condition...

And after all was said and done! Isn't she purdy?

If I wanted to be fancy, I’d apply some clear coat to seal the paint, but it seems to be holding up really well. This was an easy afternoon project that anyone could do! Have you finished any small projects lately? What room in your house is your favorite to accessorize?

Happy refinishing!

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