Hey guys!

Remember that night stand project I posted a few months ago? If you need a reminder, you can check it out here.

Well, the one part of that project that I didn’t share was how I restored the original brass pulls that are seen in the photos. I know the cool thing is to restore old furniture and then add shiny new hardware but in my case I wanted to keep the old hardware. Why, you ask? Well for one: I’m saving money; and 2: I actually really like the style of the pulls as is! It just needed a little TLC.

So after doing a quick search on the net, I found a few methods to clean the brass but found that this one was the simplest for me because it uses everything I have in my pantry on a daily basis.  All you need is lemon and baking soda, so simple right? 

And the results… Perfect!!! 

All it takes is a few simple steps with an optional final step

1.   Collect some freshly squeezed lemon juice in a small bowl. Depending on how much brass you need to clean you’ll be able to determine how much lemon juice you need (For my 4 drawer pulls I used half a lemon and had plenty leftover so it doesn’t take much.)
2. Bit by bit, stir baking soda into the lemon juice until it forms a paste. 
3. Dip a cloth into the mixture making sure you give it a good mix every time you grab more from the bowl in order to ensure the baking soda that may settle at the bottom gets remixed with the lemon juice. (it’s recommended to use a microfibre cloth, but I didn’t have that on hand so I used a disposable cleaning cloth) 
4. With the cloth wrapped around your index finger, gently rub the mixture onto the brass.  Continue to reapply the mixture to the brass until the entire piece is thoroughly cleaned and polished. may take a minute or 2 of gentle rubbing/ polishing to see the results but you WILL see results.
5. Once complete, rinse off in warm water and dry thoroughly. ( I actually rinsed off my handles and then reapplied the lemon juice mixture in certain spots where I didn’t clean thoroughly enough and then rinsed again)
6.  Optional Step: If you want the brass to have extra shine, dip a paper towel into a bit of olive oil and buff your brass piece in a circular motion making sure not too apply too much oil.  You don’t want the piece to feel greasy now!

And that’s it! Just like that you can take that old piece of brass you have laying around or found at a thrift store and make it look like new! Plus you’re saving a few bucks when you don’t actually have to go buy brass polish 😉

That’s it for today folks, now go forth and DIY!

Hugs and Love ❤

Lilly at Home