Brass Door Handles – How to Keep Them Shining Like New

A brass door handle looks beautiful when it is new and shiny. It adds up to the beauty of the home, but when brass door handles start gathering dirt and stain, the attractiveness of the handle is lost and what remains is something we do not wish to fix our eyes on. This defeat the purpose of having elegant brass handles in your home.

If the brass handles in your home have started looking dirty and stained, there is a piece of good news for you, the past glory of brass door handles can be restored and they can be made to shine like new brass handles. There is no need to replace your existing door handle, unless you want to upgrade the style.

 

Making your old brass door handles shine like new

Before beginning the cleaning up process, you should determine the nature of stain on the brass fittings, and choose the cleaning process suitable for the purpose. If you have to remove tarnish from the brass door handles to make it attractive, you would need the following materials:

1. 2 pieces of cloth
2. White vinegar
3. Lemon Juice
4. Salt

Take a piece of cloth and soak it in white vinegar or lemon juice. Add some salt to it as well. Use this cloth to wipe the door handle which needs cleaning. After that you should rinse the cloth in plain water to remove traces of white vinegar/ lemon juice from the cloth. Wring it and use this cloth to remove traces of white vinegar/ lemon juice from the door handle.

Take another piece of soft cloth (dry one) and clean the brass handle. Use this cloth to burnish the brass door handle until it shines.

If there is no tarnish and you just need to do regular cleaning, or remove the dirt or stubborn stain from the brass door handles, you can use the following:

1. Warm water
2. Dish soap
3. Two pieces of cloths
4. A brush

To clean stubborn stain or deposited dust off the brass door handles, you need a bucket of warm water. Mix a small amount of dish soap in the warm water and dip a cloth in it. Wring the cloth out and wipe the brass handle with the soapy cloth.

Now take a brush, dip it into the soapy water and scrub the door handle to remove stubborn dirt and stains. Now wipe the handle with soapy cloth. Then use fresh water to rinse the cloth. Wring the cloth and wipe out any soap remaining on the brass door handle. Afterward, use a dry soft cloth to dry the handle.

These are the two effective ways to clean the brass door handles. As said, before using any of the ways, you must find out the nature of dirt deposit or stain because excessive cleaning may discolor your fixture, particularly when it is “brass quoted”. Cleaning of brass door handles will restore the lost glory of your door fixtures, and it may save you some money. So before you go for a new set, you should consider cleaning the existing one, unless you want to change the design.

Bathroom Door Furniture – 4 Commonly Used Bathroom Door Locks

The role of bathroom door furniture like a lock is more to provide privacy to the users than is to provide security from thieves, burglars, etc. For this reason, a lock designed for and used in a bathroom door is a lot different from the ones that are used in the other doors in the house.

In general, a bathroom door lock does not use complex mechanism like using multiple cylinders and livers, but this explanation does not say much about this bathroom door furniture. To help you out, I am going to talk about 4 different lock types that are commonly used.

4 bathroom door lock types

Privacy function lock

This is the most common type of lock you will find in bathrooms. This lock is very simple. It consists of a doorknob or a lever, which has an in-built privacy function, which gets activated by push of a button or turn of a switch from inside of the bathroom. The bathroom with such locks remains open when it is unoccupied and as soon as some enters the bathroom and turns the knob or presses the button the bathroom door gets locked.

A high-quality privacy function lock also comes with an emergency button. This could be used to open the lock from the outside, if someone gets trapped inside of the bathroom.

Deadbolt lock

Deadbolt locks are normal locks used in commercial establishment. These locks are not locks but handles because these locks can be opened from both sides. A separate latch is used in a bathroom with such a lock so that the bathroom door could be closed from the inside.

Thumbturn locks

A thumbturn lock or a turnpiece lock, which it is also referred to, is a kind of lock which is operated by rotating the switch, which is on the inside of the bathroom door.  It is used with a knob or a lever. This lock has an emergency release key on the outside. This lock is very easy to operate and if a kid, accidently, get locked inside a bathroom then taking him out using the emergency release will be easy if this lock is installed in the bathroom door.

Coin lock

In public settings where many people could use a rest room, a coin lock is used to control the free use of rest room. This is often installed in a commercial setting. If a bathroom has such a lock, a person will have to drop a coin or a specially designed token in the lock in order to use the bathroom. The door of the bathroom will remain automatically closed for the duration of your use. It will accept no more coin until you open the door from the inside and exit the bathroom.

Conclusion

There are many more types of bathroom door locks that are used by people in different locations, depending upon the usages, but the locks discussed above are the most used pieces of bathroom door furniture. When installing bathroom door lock you should not go for style only, you must take into consideration the usage scenario and people who will use it.

3 Essential Tips to Keep In Mind When Buying Bathroom Door Handle

The functional utility of a bathroom door handle is only to help a person open or close the bathroom door, and if a person has installed a bathroom door handle with lock then it will also help him or her protect his or her privacy in the bathroom. But this is not all to a bathroom door handle.

You may or may not have noticed, but it does play a pivotal role in the overall decoration of your house. If a matching handle makes everything look good, a handle that does not go well with the overall interior will be like a dust spec piercing in the eye, which for all intent and purposes is not a desirable situation. It is, therefore, important for you to find a good door handle for your bathroom.

Tips for buying Bathroom door handles

Fix a budget and stick to it

When it comes to decorating a house, a person tends to go overboard with enthusiasm, and he starts spending without considering the budget. This leaves him in trouble. One should keep in mind that there is no limit to spending on home. It can take as much as you can give, so instead of going randomly shopping with unclear budger, you should fix a budget for everything including the bathroom door handle, and never ever cross the budget.

Match it with other interior items

Every item does not go well with every other item, so before buying a bathroom door handle, you should look at the styling of your home and of the bathroom. Once you get an understanding of things that you have used to decorate your home, you should decide on the kind of bathroom door handle you should buy for your bathroom.

When buying a handle you should keep in mind that the role of a bathroom door handle is to just open and close the bathroom door, and if you are buying a bathroom door handle with lock then the role changes to include ensuring privacy, and not that of security, which a lock symbolizes, so you should not invest a lot of money on that.

Consider buying a bathroom door handle with lock

By buying a bathroom door handle with lock, you will be able to save some money. It will allow you to invest in just one item, and not in two separate items. You can use the savings to make your house even more attractive.

There are many types of bathroom locks available in the market. You should do a bit of research and find one that suits your budget and fulfill your need. You can either have a deadbolt bathroom door lock, thumbturn lock, or privacy function lock for your bathroom door. These lock types are among the best in the class and works particularly well for bathroom, as each one of them is designed to provide privacy, and less to provide security.

Conclusion

Buying a bathroom door handle is an important decision. It affects the overall look of your home. You should therefore keep the above tips in mind when buying bathroom door handles or a bathroom door handle with lock.

Architectural Door Hardware – Replacing Door Handles

When buying any architectural door hardware, there are certain things that you need to keep in mind. Things like design, look and feel, ease of operation, sturdiness, etc. should be considered. You should also be concerned about the ease of installation, if you are a DIY (Do It Yourself) type because an architectural door furniture part which cannot be installed by a “non expert” is not suitable for DIY installation.

The above guideline or logic, if you may, applies to door handles replacement as well. In fact, replacing door handle is the most basic architectural door hardware replacement, which is done quite often. In this article, therefore, I will talk about how one can replace a door handle.

Replace door handle in 4 easy steps

Step 1: Gather all your tools and door handle parts

The first step towards replacing a broken door handle is to collect all the tools that you will need. You may need tools like a flat tip screw driver, a slotted tip screw driver, a hammer, a pair of long nose pliers, a pair of side cutting pliers, polypropylene handled chisel, screws, metal gasket (if needed), and door handle parts.

Step 2: study your broken handle

The goal of this step is to understand how you are going to remove the handle. You would not want to damage the texture or paint of the door, handle of which has to be removed. Some handles come with a top cover which conceals the screws. If that is the case then you should use your flat tip screw driver or polypropylene handled chisel to remove the cover from the side.

Step 3: Remove the broken door handle

The next step is to remove the broken handle from the door. Do it carefully, and do not lose patience. The process of removing the broken handle should be done carefully, or else, you may end-up scratching the door, or breaking the slot in which the handle was installed. You may need to use the pliers and a hammer for that.

Step 4: Install the new handle

After successful removal of the faulty door handle, you can put it on one side. Now the next step is to install the new one. Keep slotted tip screwdriver and screws, which must have been supplied with the replacement door handles, and hammer handy. You will need these to install the new handle. Go slow and install the door handle.

Conclusion

As you can guess from the door handle replacement steps that architectural door hardware replacement is not very tricky, but some of the replacement could be tricky. In those cases, you must call architectural door furniture replacement expert. They will do the work properly.