Doors and Locks, part 2

The day after my last post, I went back out to the house and removed all the hardware from the front door. I brought it back to my current home with the intention of cleaning it up and seeing if it was possible to salvage any of it. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.
I started with the easiest pieces: a collar to the doorknob and a keyhole escutcheon from the interior of the front door.

Life lesson: don't be the jerk who just paints over this shit

They were dirty and disgusting and covered in grimy white paint. They were so filthy, apparently even before they had been painted, that the white paint itself pretty much just peeled off in one thick layer.

A few minutes later, looking much better

I didn't need any special tools to remove the paint, other than my hands and a pair of tweezers. Once I got to this point, I started cleaning the metal in the kitchen sink, just with dish soap and warm water to loosen up some of the grime. They started to get shiny, so I switched to a paper towel and a paste of lemon juice and salt, and scrubbed them all over.

Copper!

I was pleasantly surprised to find two beautiful, shiny, copper pieces to put back on the door.

I also brought home the doorknobs and plate from the front of the door. Cleaned up in the same fashion, I found they were all a matching set. While somewhat worn, they appeared to be brass with copper accents, and were much prettier than they started out.

Front doorknob - freshly polished

The whole mortise lock assembly from the inside of the door itself was significantly larger than I had imagined it would be, and extremely heavy. I found it to be a Yale & Towne lock, patented April 6, 1909. I scrubbed it lightly and made sure all was in good working order.

Y&T mortise lock

The faceplate of this also proved to be copper after a bit of scrubbing.

Lastly, the best part of this whole ordeal. Remember this miserable-twist doorbell? 

Take out two screws? Nah, just paint over it.

I did some rummaging around the house and found the missing pieces to get this baby operational again. A few hours of scraping and polishing and oiling and it's ready to go back on the door.

Antique twist doorbell, all shined up

I can hardly believe it's the same piece. The metal underneath was so gorgeous, I can't believe someone ever made the decision to just paint over it instead of cleaning it up. 

There's even some fishscale-like detail to the metal that I couldn't even tell was there before I got the paint and dirt off.  

At this point, I'm really looking forward to getting back to the house and finishing off that door so I can see all this amazing hardware put back into action.