Easter weekend I went to my brother’s house for a family get-together.  Now… I have to set the stage for you.  Have you ever seen American Pickers?  Where the two guys drive all over the country stopping at every place that looks like it might hold “rusty gold”?  Yards, barns, outbuildings  are all filled with large collections of “stuff” (most people would say junk).  It’s kinda like that.  Ok… not totally… but close.

Sitting in the backyard was this really rusty metal lawn chair.  It had a beautiful scalloped shell back and I could see it  had been blue but was now mostly rust colored.  My bro mentioned it had belonged to my grandmother, which, of course,  made me want it even more.  It just looked so sad sitting there all alone and of course, ya know me, all I could think about for the rest of our visit was how bad I wanted to take it home and bring it back to life.  Now of course DH wasn’t going to let me stuff it in my Jeep but I did mention to my brother how much I’d like to have it to fix up.  About a month later said brother made a trip to my house to pickup some fence panels I was getting rid of and guess what was in the back of his pickup truck?  Yup, my grandmother’s lawn chair.  Yay!!

Well, I will admit I’m a little A.D.D.  More often than not I forget to take before pictures.  I just get so excited to start a project and halfway through I realize I didn’t get “before” pics. Dang it!  So here it is after a lot of sanding.  Trust me, you wouldn’t have wanted to even think about sitting in it before this.  Well, not without a tetanus shot at least.

Metal lawn chair after sanding

Now don’t think this was a simple task.  Lots and lots of elbow grease was used to get to this point.  Even DH got involved at the point where I thought my arms were gonna fall off.  I started with a basic wire brush and ended up using two different wire attachments on the cordless drill to get it smooth enough to sit on without tearing up somebody’s behind.

I also used one of those soft, squishy sanding blocks as a  final step before moving on to primer.  Ok, ok…I admit it wasn’t really primer so to speak.  But is was a rust preventive spray paint, just silver colored, that’s all.  And since I already had it on hand…cost $0.

Wow, that is one BRIGHT chair.  Didn’t plan on leaving it that way so on to the next step.  Yay!!!  Paint!!   Color!!   Nothing like the smell of spray paint in the morning, but I digress.

The color I chose was a light green.  It matches the stripe in the throw pillows that came with my new patio conversation set.  The paint is Summer Leaf by Valspar, shown here…

After what feels like a million light coats…ok, so it wasn’t a million.  But it sure felt like it.  This is what it looks like now.

Now all I gotta do is make a throw pillow for it.  Whew!  When one project is complete the next one reveals itself.  But that is another post.

Oops, looks like I didn’t bother to give you any tips…here are 2 that I LOVE!!

First…storage of spray paint cans.  Check with your favorite restaurant/bar (or maybe you already have some hanging around, wink, wink) for the cardboard carriers that 6-packs of beer come in.  Holds…guess what?….yup 6 cans of spray paint!  Definitely easier to pull out a carrier than moving  around a bunch of cans.  Sort by color, style (flat, gloss, satin) or whatever makes sense to you.

Tip #2  How do you remove spray paint from your hands, face etc.?  Ok, don’t ask how I got it on my face.  My first choice…suntan oil (’cause it smells good) or baby oil.  I haven’t tried any other oils but both of these have worked great for me.  Hope these little tidbits help.  Now… go spray paint something =)

Hope you enjoyed!  Have a good one and we’ll catch up again!