Spray painting old hardware

Old houses like ours usually come with old windows. And old windows usually come with cracked paint, drafts and old hardware. While we're saving to replace our windows with energy-efficient ones, we spruced up the old guys with a fresh coat of white paint. The paint made a huge difference, but it also made the dingy old hardware stand out. I tried cleaning it, but that didn't work very well, so I decided to try spray-paint instead. Here's what the hardware looked like before (unfortunately I seem to have photographed one of the better ones - most were really discoloured or paint-covered):

I removed all the locks and placed them on some newspaper outside. Then I sprayed them (including the screws) with several thin coats of Krylon metallic spray paint in silver. It was a really easy project - the hardest part was remembering to put the lock in different positions, since different parts of the lock show when it's open versus closed.

I'm really happy with how the project turned out - it's a great temporary fix until we can afford new windows - and I'm already planning to update other hardware this way...like maybe doorknobs?