Has anyone tried this with door handles?

pbhakta

I painted mine myself as well using paint from automotive touchup. If you start in the morning remove the handles, prep, and start painting, you can get them put back on the next day after a bit of wet sanding the clearcoat. Here is mine, done in about a 1.5 days.

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kenchan

GJ! Looks good.

pbhakta

Thanks!

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JARblue

Very nice! This is exactly what I want to do - same color and everything. I've just been hesitant to actually do the work. Do you have any pointers? A couple of questions that come to mind are: how did you hold the handle open when painting (I would assume you have to wait an hour or so for it to dry before handling it)? how many layers of paint and clear did you use? What grit did you wetsand the clear with and how detailed were you about it (there are lots of crevices)?

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pbhakta

I started by roughing up the surface with a 800 grit sandpaper, cleaned and let dry. I sprayed the handles with a plastic adhesion promoter and put on 3-4 coats of a light grey primer. The way you keep the handle propped open is just by using a small pin or screw and wedge it in under the handle to keep it open. Once that dries i sprayed about 7-8 light coats of the Gun Metallic from all different angles. Dont worry if you dont get full coverage on the first few coats. With this color you have to be careful not to spray too thick of a coat each pass because you can easily get to dark if you dont use very light coats. Just pay special attention to the edges as the paint will always be thinnest there and will easily come off if you dont do extra coats just on the edges to build up the same thickness as the flat parts. Once this dries, i sprayed on the clear about 4-5 light coats. The next day, I wet sanded with a 1200 or 1500 grit sandpaper since there was only a little bit of orange peel i needed to get rid of. Polished it out and it was done. Alot of the DIY paint door handle threads helped me out if you go take a look.

Shows a pic of how to prop open the handle:
Diy paint door handles

Useful tips:
want to paint my own door handle's, any tips

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