Make Do and Mend Mondays

Today I'm joining Heidi in Make Do and Mend Mondays.  This project has been well over a year in the making; sad, but true.

When we built our home, we couldn't decide on kitchen cabinet door and drawer pulls, so we told the builder to leave the cabinets without them and we would choose something later, which we did.  In September, 2005, I drilled holes for and installed 23 pulls*, leaving me with a great sense of satisfaction and tendonitis in my left elbow (which still occasionally bothers me to this day).  By last summer, here's what they looked like:

Ridiculous, given what these things cost!  I had seen an HGTV show in which they had spray painted these types of handles with a product called Plasti Dip, and thought it was worth a try.  I had saved some pieces of packing styrofoam, and by placing toothpicks in it, I was able to line up the handles for painting.

I'd like to say this was the end of it, but I discovered that it's imperative that the paint make contact with itself all the way around the handle, because I missed the underside of quite a few handles, and had to peel the paint off (really!) and repaint them.  All's good now, which is great because it's turned too cold to paint outside.

Don't you think these look better?  For about $6.00, I have "new" handles, which look almost new again.
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*You might think we have a large kitchen based on this number, but the reality is we have only four drawers and many little cabinets in our small kitchen.