Hand Painted Cabinet Knobs step-by-step

This is my first project covering beginning to end in one post.  FINALLY A FINISHED PROJECT!!

I want hand painted knobs in my new kitchen but I refuse to spend $5 per knob especially when I found a lot of 25 unfinished knobs on eBay for $14.94. There was a choice of a couple of different types.  I really liked the oval-shaped ones but they have two screw holes and in my opinion it is a beast to install two screws in one knob and make it even and not too far apart or close together.  One hole has a smaller margin of error and that’s right down my alley.

Can I paint them and make them look decent?  I don’t know but I am gonna try.  If I fail I can always go back to my previous knobs.

Here are my inspiration photos:

           

I picked up a can of Blue Hawk Rust Resistant Spray from Lowes.  I usually only buy Valspar or Rust-Oleum spray paints but I decided to try this one because  it was on sale for  half the price of the others. It said on the can that it is for use on metal, wood and more.  I was praying that this would work out mainly because of the price.

At first I taped my knobs to a piece of drywall with duct tape

and sprayed on the first coat.

The paint soaked right into the wood.  Ewwl.  It said to let the paint dry an hour between coats.  I did.  about 5 times.  This is definitely not a one or two coat paint but the can lasted all the way to the last coat.

After I put on the first coat of paint some of the knobs fell over.  I forgot that duct tape hates moisture.  I found some styrofoam and stuck one nail in for each knob and moved them over to the Styrofoam.

Now I do have to admit that once I finished the whole can of paint on the knobs (hours and hours later) I like the way it looks.  The paint hardened really well and felt cured 2 hours after the last coat.  That’s good! They are high gloss 🙂 and to me they kind of look like porcelain.

Although they look kind of like a light light brown they are really bright white and soooo shiny and they feel sooo smooth.

Next I got a set of 12 bottles of Bella acrylic paint  at Homedepot for $4.99.  Lots of nice colors to choose from!!

I painted them and overall I like them.  There are 2 that I hate and guess what?  I painted 2 extras.  so that worked.

I painted them one row of 5 at a time.  I did the orange row first.  I started with orange then outlined in black then added the green accents.  Next row focused on purple, next row on red and last row on blue. I added the dots on all of them to have something to tie them together.

After everything dried I wanted to put a top coat on it to seal and protect them.

I sprayed them and then something weird happened

can you see it?

what the heck???  Well you know what…they still going up…wrinkles ans all.  Well actually I am going to see what happens to them tomorrow.  I hope the paint doesn’t peel off.

total spent:

knobs…60 cents x 20 knobs= 12.00

white paint                                    3.50

color paint                                     4.99

clear paint                                       3.75

total…………………………………24.74 or $1.12 each

will I do this again?  possibly

after thought:   The painting part wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be and none of them came out as I imagined.  I still like them though.

Next Day:

After the “gloss” dried they looked okay but I was a little disappointed that they were not a high gloss.  I really wanted a glassy finish on the knobs so they would have that porcelain look.  There were a couple that I wasn’t satisfied with so I played with them this morning.  Still not satisfied but feel a little better about them.