For the Love of Spray Paint

My thrift store finds

A few weeks ago I made a trip to my local Goodwill and picked up a few items which included a tray, a green flower pot originally from Edible Arrangements, and a ugly decorative vase-type item, all for under $10 buckaroos. I haven't done anything to the green flower pot yet. I kind of like the lime green color and I might just leave it as is for awhile and find a cute little plant to put in it. I have a few ideas in mind for the tray, but you will just have to wait for that. The first item I conquered was the weird colored vase. I decided to go with a glossy white and see how that turned out, because I have learned that almost anything looks better once it is painted white or black.

Ugly vase before

So I went to Kmart to grab some Rust-oleum white primer and High Gloss White Spray Paint. The Kmart near us is closing soon so pretty much everything in the store is on sale, including the spray paint. I look my ugly looking vase outside and placed it on a piece of plastic (I recommend using cardboard though, it was winding and my plastic didn't want to stay on the ground) and primer away. I did two coats of thin primer and then let that dry and then did about four thin coats of spray paint. After letting that dry for a few days in the garage I brought it inside and this is what I ended up with. I think it turned out pretty well. I will probably put some pretty branches or flowers in the vase at some point but I don't have anything at the moment. But I am quite satisfied with my result. What do you think?

 

Vase After

Let There Be Light

So it may have taken us about six months, but we finally tackled our first real DIY home project which is our dining room light. When are house was built it was still the era of ugly brass/chrome lights and fixtures. So this is what our light looked like before.

Before

 

It is quite dated and even though we still don't have a dining room table yet we thought we would go ahead and get this little project over with so down came the light. We decided to give the light a makeover instead of completely replacing it, so off to Lowes we went. Stephen and I decided on Rustoleum's Hammered Black spray paint and three new glass dome things. We also chose to replace the existing chain with a new black one and also to buy new black wiring. We all was said and done the cost came to roughly $45.00 instead of at least $150.00 to buy a new fixture. Since Stephen can completely re-wire a car we figured that re-wiring a light would be a piece of cake for him, and we were partly right. We did run into a tiny snag when we realized that the wiring that we bought was slightly wider than the existing wiring so we had to shave off some of the plastic coating in order to fit it through everything but it was still worth it in the end. And here is what our light now looks like thanks to one afternoon of spray painting and about an hour of so of re-wiring.

After