Bye-bye brass!

I'm NOT a big fan of shiney brass objects. Not. A. Fan. In fact, one of the first "home improvement" projects I made my husband do was change out the tarnished brassy french handles on the doors. They are now a nice, uniform satin nickel. Nice.

But that project ended up being a LOT more expensive than I would have thought. After all, you can't change the handles ($26/each) and leave the ugly brass hinges, too, right? And apparently we have a LOT of doors in our house.

So when I look at our shiney brass ceiling fans, I become a little deflated. I know that you can find cheap-o fans, but the fans we have may be ugly, but they are GOOD fans! I can't justify the expense to replace them.

Hello, Spray Paint.

My best friend.

So while my hubby was out of town this week, I decided to give it a go, and try painting the brassy awefulness that was clinging to the family room ceiling.

I failed to get a true "before" picture, since I was in such a mad rush to get it down, so here's a half-hearted one:

Just imagine it with fan blades :)

And to be fair, this was one of the better looking brass fans, since it wasn't completely brass... it did have that going for it. Also, I liked that because I didn't have to take down the ENTIRE fan for this project. I just took off the blades, the light kit, and the grill thingy.

I taped over all the electrical work with newspaper & masking tape in a very technically exacting method.... uh, sure.

I gave everyone a good coat of primer.

The screws I just threw in a little box, and sprayed while I shook the box a little. Seems to have worked :)

Now, as I was reassembling my masterpiece, I ran into a bit of a dilemna. Since I didn't take apart the whole thing, I realized that the little pull-chain for the fan was still attached within the fan motor part, and there was no apparent way for me to remove it for spraying outside. I couldn't leave it as-is, because it really stood out next to the light nickel.... Enter Grocery Bag Spray Paint Accessory.

Yes, that's right, I grabbed a bag, kind of cradled the little chain inside, and did some blind spraying. Maybe not the most efficient use of spray paint, but hey, it got the job done! And I didn't find any "snow" on the fabric of my couch underneath when I was finished. Nice.

So here she is, with some new frosted shades to replace the dated cut glass ones (please ignore the hideous curly-shirley light bulbs that my hubby is obssessed with. Someday I'll switch them out when he won't notice!):

Sleek!

Linking up to Transformation Thursday at