shiny things: adventures in eco-friendly brass polishing

As much as I’d like my (future) apartment to look like a well-style Pottery Barn catalog, I know it’s not in the cards. My furniture comes from about, oh, eight different sources; a few pieces are all matchy-matchy and modern, from a childhood bedroom set; others are eighty-year-old antiques that have seen better days. There’s a set of four blond wooden chairs thrown in there, too, and a dining room table that doesn’t work with any of the above.

I’m a girl who appreciates good interior design, so something had to change. I imagine I’m not alone? Most of us don’t live in magazine or catalog pages, and can’t afford to buy our way in. But, as I’ve discovered recently, we can take matters into our own DIY-hungry hands and, well, fake it till we make it. I’m embarking on a journey to refinish or paint all these clashing pieces until they work as a team, a process that I’ll eventually chronicle on these pages.

But I decided to start slowly on the DIY front: by removing eighty years of tarnish from my dresser’s brass handles. (See below—not so pretty.) The eco-friendly, fume-free solution? Not your traditional, harsh metal polish, but rather a homemade batter of sorts, found here; the chemical reaction between the acidic, salty batter and the brass pretty much does all the polishing for you.

I began by stirring together 1.5 cups of flour, the same amount of vinegar, and a cup of salt. Onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet went half of the batter, followed by a single layer of brass drawer pulls, and finished with a second layer of the vinegar-y mixture so that everything was buried. If you have lightly tarnished pieces, you may only have to let them sit for 1-2 hours; mine required about eight. After a salt-and-vinegar bath, all they needed was a rinse and a gentle scrub (an old toothbrush works perfectly), and they looked at least forty years younger.

Eventually, I hope to sand my dresser down, paint it lipstick red, and use it as a glamorous TV stand with lots of fantastic storage space (and, of course, pretty shiny drawer pulls).

Are any of you DIY addicts? I wonder if these skills are genetic, or if they can be acquired with a bit of elbow grease and dedication. I’m crossing my fingers that it’s the latter.