Spray Paint Makeovers

Back in the glory days (aka before kids) we used to go garage sale-ing a lot. We picked up some steals, and I always loved the thrill of the hunt. There's been a couple of weeks that we considered going lately, but as soon as I think about getting everyone ready and having to get Thing One and Thing Two out of the car at every stop...no deal seems worthy of all that. Some day we will return to claim our sale-ing title. In the mean time, I am still working with stuff I bought at sales years ago. I got this chair for $1. I intended to strip and re-stain it. So I stripped it and could still never get the color to even out. Then I waited 6 years. Finally, a few weeks ago I decided I could at least improve the look by painting the whole chair white.

I bought this spray paint for dummies. (See, you can use this to paint a chair! I am every marketer's dream I'm sure. I told you about the bird feeder. )

Anyway, it took about a can and a half, since the wood had been stripped and it soaked up a lot of the paint. But it came out nice and smooth and shiny.

A little too shiny actually, so I decided to de-stress a little bit. Then Thing one decided to de-stress a little more. See that section in the front? I'm calling that "character."

I like my little faux antique country chair, and it looks a lot better at my sewing table (i.e. in my bedroom). I did spray a clear coat over everything after de-stressing.

Spray paint can do wonderful things, and there's nothing I love more than a quick project with dramatic results. This little plastic table used to be white. White was seeming kind of stark, so I sprayed it silver to match these chairs. This is year two and it is still looking good.

But these chairs did not turn out so great. A few years ago I discovered that they make spray paint for plastics! On the can it shows a plastic play house and a chair like this, so I thought it would be fun to turn my white patio chairs blue (and a bright blue at that). Unfortunately in the Colorado sun it wasn't long before the blue paint was wearing off on unsuspecting butts. Can I tell you to never spray paint an outdoor plastic chair? Just don't do it.

I hope you have a great weekend. Enjoy those garage sales if you can, and if not I'm sure there's a project that's been sitting around for 6 years or so that you can bust out.

Thanks for reading.

- Haley