sprucing up with spray paint

One of my favorite ways to bring new life to an old item is to spray paint it. Spray paint used to only come in a primary and secondary colors but now it comes in so many pretty colors. If you want a really smooth finish it’s important to use high quality spray paint – you know, something that costs more than $1.97.

When we moved I didn’t worry to much about the decorating aspect of unpacking. But now that we’ve been here a while and I’ve had time to think about what works with what we already have I’ve found myself reaching for the spray paint more and more to add continuity and color to our rooms.

I have a wooden tray in my kitchen that we use to put our glasses on so that we don’t end up with glasses being left all over the house or piled up in the sink. Unfortunately the water from the glasses sweating has left it looking pretty shabby (and not the chic kind of shabby). I spray painted the tray Cherry Read from Krylon and then decoupaged it with some fun paper we found. Then I put a couple of coats of Minwax clear over the whole thing.

Benjamin’s area of his room was needing a little bit of sprucing up so we picked this great blue from Valspar called Deep Sea Diving. We painted his picture frame from his Pinewood Derby Award, his pegboard and two little shelves that used to be white and in the girls’ room. While I loved the color and the coverage of the paint it stayed tacky for a long time….like days not hours.

This is my front porch rocking chair. It used to be an inside chair but there isn’t room in this house so now it’s the porch rocking chair. Since moving to the porch it’s really gotten worn. First we sanded the chair, we didn’t worry about getting all the finishing off we just roughed it up a bit. Then we had to glue the seat back together and clamp it for a day. The next day we painted it a lovely royal blue from Krylon.

Carl calls it my Smurf chair but I don’t care I was tired of seeing brown every time I drove up. I’m looking for some fabric to recover the cushion and I think some stenciling on the headrest would be nice.

How do you spruce up around the house?

Thanks for sharing with your friends!