Door Chime Restoration Time

We we're gone for a month or so, waaayyy too long (our sincerest apologies). I was hoping to update our blog on a weekly basis but June was a crazy month for us. We both got sick for about two weeks, Leonel's grandfather fell severely ill and has been in the hospital since June began. :( Praying for good health and a speedy recovery! My brother-n-law graduated from UCI, woo hoo!!! My grandmother is visiting from Mexico, I hadn't seen her in over ten years! Couldn't find it in our hearts to say hold on grandma and grandpa, I have to work on my blog so I'll SEE YA LATER!! Ummmm... yeah that would never happen, we enjoy blogging but some life events are more important. (Don't take it personal) So now you know why we had to dessert you guys for a while, we hope you understand. In between all of this madness we squeezed in a few projects and managed to host a beautiful dinner party (along with my mother) for family and friends. Pictures and details will be coming soon :). 

To get back in the groove of things I'm going to share a simple project we completed that made a huge impact. As you may or may not know my parent's have renovated their home but this particular item we couldn't bear to part with. The original door bell of the home is actually a vintage door chime. It works perfectly and sounds so pretty but the poor thing was rusted and a lil beat up looking, so we decided to give it a makeover. The door chime is from the 1930's, it's a NuTone to be exact. Since we don't know much about door bells I did some research and discovered the niche it's placed in was customized for these specific type of door chimes.  This is a picture of the original door chime.....

We knew a lil TLC would make this rusted old thing beautiful again. We personally don't care for copper or gold, we wanted to paint it silver. We don't have anything against copper or gold it just doesn't go with our current color scheme. The final color combination we selected was silver and black. We used Rustoleum Spray Paint to get the job done, didn't cost much at all and the project was completed in a day. The silver had a metallic finish and the black was layered using flat black and sealed with black semi-gloss spray paint.

My dad hung the chimes on a piece a scrap metal he had laying around and balanced them between a ladder and the wall. Two coats of spray paint later the chimes looked good as new :D. 

We hung the cover, face plate, or whatever you want to call it on a piece of wire. Spray painted it with the same silver spray paint, completed two coats to give it a nice even finish. Looks soooooooooooo much better, doesn't it??

Silver on silver would have been overkill so we removed some of the detachable pieces of metal with the intention to leave them silver and paint the rest black. You can see below what was removed. We used flat spray paint for the first coat and semi-gloss for the second and final coat of spray paint. 

We love the final result, it looks so fabulous!!! 

Don't underestimate the power of paint, it transformed this vintage door chime into a contemporary show piece. Not only does it sound beautiful but it looks just as good with our lil makeover. And the great thing about Rustoleum spray paint is it doesn't require any sanding, just wiped all the pieces down with a rag before you begin painting. Easy peasy! 

Stay tuned for more transformations ;D

Much Love, V&L