Who doesn’t love the evocative image of a beautiful, romantic brass bed?

The person who has to polish it, that’s who! Jim and I bought a queen size brass bed frame over 40 years ago.  It was in our bedroom for many years.  For most of that time, it was the feature in the room and sparkled in front of deep hunter green walls.  Babies were made on it and kids played on it (maybe that explains some of the cracks in the upright posts?).  When we renovated our bedroom, we changed locations and sizes of windows and upgraded closets, and where the bed would be in the room changed too.  The brass bed was replaced by a contemporary wood suite of pieces that offered more storage options.  The brass bed was dismantled and stored away.  It has been in storage facilities, the shed, the barn and finally in the cellar of the house currently under construction up on The Ridge.

After the floor tile was completed and the baseboard trim was installed we were ready to move back into our Master Bedroom here on Runaway Ridge.  We got the brass bed headboard and footboard out from behind the stack of building materials and other furniture that had hidden it in the back corner of the cellar.  I’m really sorry that I didn’t get a picture of its “before” condition.  You’ll just have to believe me - it was a tarnished, sticky, dirty mess.  This isn’t our actual bed pictured here, but it looked a lot like this when we started to clean it up...

I have polished our bed frame with Brasso before but I wanted to see if there were any effective homemade concoctions.  After a couple of internet searches I came across a recipe that was on several sites.  It consisted of Coarse Kosher Salt, Powdered Laundry Detergent, Flour and Distilled Vinegar.  Different sites had slightly different variations on ratios but these four ingredients were consistently referenced.  The biggest challenge was finding the powdered laundry detergent.  Turns out most of us don’t use that format of detergent much any more!  I found a very inexpensive brand called FOCA,  in a relatively small quantity bag, at Walmart.

My first batch of this homemade cleaner was made up of the following ratio (per the instructions on the website): ½ c salt, ½ c detergent, ½ c flour, ¾ c vinegar and ½ c water.  The site didn’t give a whole lot of details.  It didn’t discuss how to combine the ingredients, it simply said to make a “vinegar paste” out of them.  The additional directions were equally cryptive: apply the “paste” to the brass bed and let it stand for 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes, rinse the paste away with lukewarm water and a soft cloth.  Then polish the brass with another clean, dry cloth.

I began with the footboard of the bed frame.  It’s slightly smaller than the headboard and the back of it is always hidden by the height of the mattress, foundation and bed linens.  So, it was a little less work and less risky for testing this method out on.  My first attempt was only modestly effective.  The ratio of ingredients I gave in the previous paragraph did NOT form a paste.  It was liquidy and runny and difficult to apply.  It ran over the brass in rivulets.  I wasn’t sure if I should use a cloth to wipe it around or if any rubbing motion would be necessary to initiate the breakdown of the tarnish.  The good news is that whatever the chemical reaction is between this concoction and the tarnish on the brass, it takes place almost immediately.  Where I could see the drip marks of the movement of this liquid across the surface of the brass, I could tell the tarnish was definitely being affected.  After the suggested 15 minutes had elapsed, I dutifully removed the residue of this cleaner.  I could definitely see the benefits but wondered how many applications the process would require in order to bring my bed frames back to a clean, bright, glowing finish.

I mixed up another batch of the cleaner, this time deleting the water, hoping this would result in a “paste”.  I also made a double batch so that I would have more goop to use for the next application.  This ratio was 1 c salt, 1 c detergent, 1 c flour and 1-½ c vinegar.  The consistency was better.  I could actually kind of spoon it onto the frame and it took a little longer to ooze itself over the surfaces.  Again, it was pretty good at removing the worst of the tarnish.  But I still didn’t see much effective “polishing” of the surfaces after rinsing and then buffing with a clean dry cloth.

At this point in the process, one of my friends, Janis, was with us up on The Ridge and was willing to work on this project with me.  She put in a lot of effort and elbow grease!  She also came up with a very important refinement to the recipe.  She used a whisk to blend all the dry ingredients together before adding the vinegar.  This gave the mix a better consistency, a more even blend of all the ingredients and therefore gave us a better overall reaction on the brass.  We also made a big batch using the ratio of 2 c salt, 2 c detergent, 2 c flour and just 2-¾ c vinegar.  This resulted in a very stiff mixture of what I would definitely call a thick paste.  It was easy to apply to the round brass tubes and even to spoon over the detailed finials.  We were ok with leaving it on the brass until we had used up the whole batch of our paste in one application.  We didn’t worry about the actual timing.  When we rinsed it off, we were very thorough in removing all of it from the frame.  I can’t imagine that leaving this crusty cleaning agent on any surface would be good if left too long.

The biggest impact that this cleaning agent had was to remove all the old tarnish, dirt and such from the frame.  But I still don’t think we would have gotten our desired results with just this agent alone and the process of buffing it after removing the paste.  Once we felt like we had gotten the worst of the tarnish removed, and could see some of the brass coming to life, we buffed the frame as originally instructed but then began applying the Brasso for the final polish and shine.

This is the headboard after the application of the “paste”.  If you look closely you’ll see that some areas are already looking really good and others have a rather blotchy, orange tiger striping.  It was at this point that I decided to switch to using the Brasso.

Even when using the Brasso, my suggestion is not to be shy with the product.  The best reaction you’re going to get is the initial application of the cream.  Use a cloth to apply it, rub it on, give it some pressure and then use another clean, dry cloth to buff it.  Repeat - over and over until you get the desired shine.  Rubbing the Brasso around more, once the cream turns your cloth green, isn't going to be as effective as applying another fresh dollop of Brasso and repeating the process.  I found that using a “shoe shine” action of pulling a cloth back and forth around the brass rods or over the finials or around the round tops of the posts was most effective.  The pressure and the friction brought the brass back to life.

Be prepared to invest some time in this process.  I estimate that we spent 14-16 hours of labor to get the frame looking good.  But, the brass bed is once again a piece of furniture I am really proud to use.  It looks good in its new surroundings!