From Shiny Chrome Chandelier over Bathtub to Subdued Brushed Chrome

When I visited my sister about a year-and-a-half ago, she had hung the loveliest oil-rubbed bronze chandelier over her bathtub. It is just the prettiest thing. Here is hers:

I wanted one, too! The metal in our bathroom is chrome, so I bought this chandelier from Overstock over a year ago. It hangs over the bathtub in our master bathroom also. It's a nice chandelier (cheap, like $80 or something), but I didn't like the shiny chrome finish of it. All the rest of the metal in the bathroom is brushed chrome, so I wanted it to match better.

See how shiny it is?! So I decided to get out my handy-dandy Folk Art paint. This color is Silver Sterling (#662).

I proceeded to stand on the tub surround and paint this thing. I just used a small foam brush. I know you're supposed to sand stuff and prime before you paint (so the paint adheres), but I didn't feel like it. UPDATE: Turns out I should have used a metal primer, but I did not. I did not want to take this thing down, tape all the crystals so they didn't get paint on them, etc.

I did the hinges on my armoire last weekend with the same paint, and I didn't sand before. The hinges were brass before. Here's the before and after.

Here's a closeup of the hinge now and how it matches the acrylic knobs brushed chrome hardware:

So I didn't sand before. After I did a few coats of the silver sterling paint, I decided it was looking a little too dark. So I bought some of the Folk Art Metallic Pearl White paint (#659) at Walmart for $1.57. I did a coat of that over it. Then I decided it needed a tinge of gold paint to bring it back to the brushed chrome color in the bathroom. So I used Folk Art Metallic Paint in Champagne. Here are all the bottles I used:

Here's the progress. It needed to match the top of the shower enclosure behind it. This one's too dark.

Getting closer. This one is almost there:

Ta-da! This one is now to my liking:

It just mutes the shininess enough. And I know the paint is not really adhering (since I didn't prime or sand), it's just sitting on top of the metal, but this chandelier will never get handled, so I can live with that. Plus, no one is ever going to look closely at it in order to see what the paint looks like.

One project down, about 10,000 more to go.