Brushing Nickel

I am way overdue on posting, but it's not because we haven't been busy. In fact, as is usually the case, I've been too busy to blog--but getting good material for when I finally have a chance to organize my thoughts. So in the meantime, please accept this sad excuse for an update. I discovered this funny little fix a few months ago during our mini bathroom revamp. I wanted to put hooks in both showers for my soap poof and comb, but was having trouble finding a nice piece of hardware. After all our re-grouting work (and the professional remodel upstairs), I didn't want any ugly suction cups. So we bought these--they stick on with adhesive but if that doesn't stay up, my parents actually had luck grouting them in place. The only problem was that they only came in one finish--shiny chrome.

It sounds stupid but I don't like to mix the metals in my decor. Our downstairs bathroom is all done in shiny chrome, so it was no problem sticking one of these up next to our fancy new shelves (alcohol swab to clean, then press and hold for one minute, then don't actually use the shower for about a day). I didn't want to put one upstairs where we've managed to stick entirely to brushed nickel. I bought some spray paint in nickel but was trying to figure out how to get the white part taped up and still get spray paint into the inner section of the hook.

So I decided to try something different. I "brushed" the finish...I took sand paper (probably 220 or 320 grit--can't remember) and gently started to sand the hook. Now this obviously won't work on plastic made to look like metal and probably isn't a guaranteed fix any time, but I actually managed to create the finish I wanted with sand paper. See the difference below? Now maybe that seems minor to you (I mean, I do understand that really in the big scheme of things, having a shiny hook next to dull shower hardware is not a big problem), but I thought it was pretty exciting.

Interesting to note--my mom had a go at "brushing" the nickel and sanded hard enough that she scraped the silver finish off completely to find what looked like copper. I wonder how many layers these things have!

I am still looking for a pretty razor holder to stick on the wall, if anyone has a suggestion.

I promise I'll have more material soon--I'm in the middle of refinishing 3 pieces of furniture and a lot of yard work. Stick around, I promise it will get more exciting!