I like chrome. Shiny, silverly chrome. My motorcycle has a lot of chrome on it, for one. When we moved into the house, the house was generally accented (door knobs, hinges, fixtures) with brass or brushed bronze finish on most things. Early on we replaced the door knobs, hinges, and had light fixtures chromed or (if needed) replaced with chrome versions – as such, the house now has a chrome silver accent color on the interior, instead of brass and bronze.
A lot of projects have been done in the kitchen, such as a new kitchen floor, painting, etc. In the kitchen we have a large, built-in banquette (in place since 1962ish), with a kitchen table. The legs of the table are original – heavy duty steel legs, they were originally powder coated enamel, but after 50 years that enamel was pretty worn and needed to be addressed. After giving it some thought, I came to one conclusion: chrome them.
The nearest place that does this type of work is up in Syracuse (a little over an hour away), called Sandy’s Bumper Mart. They had done a few smaller projects previously for us, cleaning and chroming some light fixtures in the living room. For about $400 and a few hours of my time to haul them back and forth, off they went to be refinished. I built some temporary legs from extra wood I had around to tide us over so we could still use the table in the meantime. A few weeks later we got them back, and the results were spectacular. Here are some pictures showing the change (I will point out it is difficult to get a good picture of table legs):
A good coat of wax will preserve the chrome finish from tarnishing if water spills on it.