Amazing the things you can learn on your friend’s Facebook page!! What exactly do I mean?? Well, Trudy { aka The Best Aunt Ever } posted that she had cleaned some old family silver. I was curious. I had been gifted some silver pieces that had been hanging out in an old barn for awhile and I would love to see them with a bit of shine….as you can see, no shine there….
Thankfully, Trudy posted some instructions for those of us who never shine silver. Seemed easy, all stuff I had at home { which I love when the idea to do something strikes me } so I gathered up the pieces and took them to the house.
Step 1. Get some water boiling.
Step 2. Line the sink with aluminum foil
Step 3. Add some Baking Soda
Step 4. Lay in your pieces
Step 5. Pour the boiling water over it all
I’m going to interject here and tell you what happened for me. It looked like nothing happened. It smelled bad. But I saw nothing change. And the water was HOT, so it wasn’t like I was going to stick my hand in. So, I sprinkled on MORE Baking Soda. And….
It started hissing and bubbling! Like magic!
I let the water cool a bit more and finally grabbed an exposed corner of a plate and pulled it out. The tarnish was rubbing off! I grabbed a cloth and rubbed more. There was still some really heavily tarnished areas so I sprinkled on some baking soda and just rubbed with my fingers. Magic, folks…..unbelievable!! I worked away at all the pieces with more baking soda and my hands. I’m so impressed. I never thought these dirty, tarnished pieces would – COULD ever shine again! As a sidenote, my hands don’t look so ‘shiny’….the tarnish is embedded in the cracks and grooves of my hands now….but its fine, it matches the paint 🙂
They are by no means perfect. But, if memory serves me correctly, I think they may have been through a house fire { Wendy? Am I right on that? } Regardless, they look 100% better than they did this morning! I left the little cup so you could see the difference, side by side. Amazing, no?
I loved them before, they made great pieces to display little things at markets. But, I think I’ve just grown more attached to them!
So, what do you think? Would you try it? Did you already know all this? What shiny pieces of silver did you fall for?
To be continued,
Lori
