Refinish a Metal Sign - A Tutorial

My hubby is an amateur photographer and likes taking photos of movie theaters. He has spent the last several years honing his skills and has taken some really awesome pictures. So, we decided to display some of them in our dining area. We found a metal "Cinema" sign at Hobby Lobby to accompany them, but it wasn't exactly what we wanted. So I decided to refinish it and put together a tutorial on how I did it.

Step One: Find your item to refinish. This is what our sign looked like before I modified it. It's pretty cool, but we didn't really like the red and black in our mostly green kitchen because it stood out too much.

 Step Two: Prime your sign. I didn't actually buy primer. I had previously purchased a small sample container of white paint from Lowe's and had only used a tiny bit. So I used that. I painted the entire sign with the white and let it dry overnight.

Step Three: Paint your sign. I ended up painting mine twice. First, I used Rustoleum Metallic Spray Paint in Rubbed Bronze. It ended up being too black. I tried sanding it down a bit and distressing it, making some of the white undercoat show through, but it was still too dark, as seen here. 

So I covered that with a coat of Valspar Metallic Spray Paint in Silver. This lightened it up considerably. Then I sanded with fine grit sandpaper, which scuffed up the surface and brought some of the rubbed bronze through. This did put some heavier scratches in the finish as well, so I buffed the entire thing with steel wool. The steel wool was awesome! It evened out the sanding so that the distressing looked more natural.

Here is the finished product as it is displayed on our wall:

{Linked on New Nostalgia, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Hope Studios, Adventures of a DIY Mom, VMG206, Ladybug Blessings, The DIY Dreamer, Nap-Time Creations}