How to restore oil rubbed bronze finish to sink drain that's turned brassy?

A. Hi Cheryl. Please mail a photo of it to mooney@finishing.com for posting here if you can so we can better understand exactly what you are confronting. A blue coloration probably means the base is copper or brass, which is a good thing. But getting good paint adhesion in such circumstances is difficult. You should apply a primer made for metal before you think about the finish coat ... but you might try what we suggested to previous readers: cleaning the blue and any other corrosion, darkening the brass, then lacquering it.

Luck & Regards,

A. We consumers rarely know what a finish actually is in this age of high technology finishes ... only what it "looks like"; and many finishes can't stand up to scouring like the old nickel-chrome plating did. Your finish may not actually involve oil, or rubbing, or bronze :-)

The finish might be a vacuum-applied PVD coating, or even a tinted electrophoretic lacquer which is no longer there -- in which case it's really not fixable. But statistically speaking, it's most probably brass that has been darkened with a brass darkening solution like liver of sulfur ⇦this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] , followed by a lacquer or other clearcoat. So hopefully it will be possible to restore the dark color either with a darkening chemical, or maybe even by laying a few broken hard boiled eggs on the drain overnight, covered by plastic wrap. If you get it a likable shade of dark, you can polish if you wish to get lighter highlights, then apply brass lacquer or other clearcoat to give it at least a bit of wear resistance.

If you like to play and learn, success may not be impossible :-)
But if you want a rapid sure-fire solution there probably isn't one. Be careful to keep the darkening solution and lacquer off the rest of the sink. Good luck.

Regards,