Bye Bye Brass Plated Light Fixtures

The former owners of my home moved into it in the 80's, as a result, we have a lot of 80's features; brass, orangey oak.... you get the picture! Yesterday, I whipped out the flat black spray paint and annihilated 2 brass plated light fixtures. I feel so much better now!

There's the lovely brass light fixtures on my shiny ceiling, and peeking out is the very lovely orangey oak bifold closet doors. Nothing has been done to this hallway since we moved in, it's our upstairs hallway leading to all the bedrooms and a broom closet of a bathroom. I don't like the shiny ceiling, luckily I have several pails of white ceiling paint. I also don't like the weird white border around the top of my walls, but that's all a post for another day... moving along... lol.

Since new light fixtures for this hallway are not a major priority, I decided to spray paint them flat black. I already had this spray paint on hand, I believe it was from Walmart (yes, that's my striped bathroom in the background that I have yet to post about!). I prefer using name brand paints, but for an item which very rarely gets touched, this is ok, and was probably only $2 or less! I may spray the dome knob with a better paint in the future because that piece does get some use when the bulbs need to be changed.

I am deathly afraid of electricity even if I know it's turned off, so I didn't want to mess with that and decided to paint the light fixtures right on the ceiling. I unscrewed the little brass piece which holds the frosted glass dome in place, I then taped off the ceiling.

I started by taping off the ceiling right around the fixture, but this particular fixture is right over my staircase so I could not access the far side without majorly stretching from the ladder over the drop of doom. I ended up tracing another fixture we had stored away, onto newspaper and taping that up to the ceiling along with some other sheets of newspaper.

To prevent paint from getting on the wires and bulb sockets, I removed the bulbs, then I made a cylinder of newspaper, cut slits one inch apart around the rim, and pressed them flat up to the fixture and taped it on. It was hard to spray around this cylinder but I managed.

The little pieces that hold the dome on were just sprayed on some newspaper. Everything took 2 coats. I did a light spray and waited 15 minutes and did a final spraying. If you attempt to do this keep in mind that it's a hard angle to spray on so be sure to check from all angles to be sure everything's covered.

I think the results are so much better. I noticed the glare of that brass all the time. Now, I think these little lights have a chic look... well in comparison anyway.

Here's a picture of the two lights completed.

If you attempt this yourself, be sure to open as many windows as possible and don't be like me, wear a face mask. My nostrils were black... yikes!

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