Remember this? I headed out thrifting specifically to find some things to spray paint a la the Young House Love book.

Well, I finally found some things to spray paint. Three of them, actually. So far we’ve only tackled two because the third one will be a little more complicated and deserves a post of its own so here’s the skinny on the easier ones.

First thing, we live in a condo with no backyard or garage so out to the front lawn we went with our plastic dropcloth and our painting supplies. Based on consultation with our friendly neighborhood experts on everything at Twins Ace Hardware, we elected to go with Rustoleum Rust Reformer, a spray paint primer because we were going from black to white on one of the pieces and two colors of spray paint: one gold and one gloss white.

We’ve also got some WD-40 in there for squeaky wheels and a brass brush and 000 steel wool for dealing with  flaking rust and paint.

It was actually a few weeks ago that I bought this little piece. I walked in the house with it after a day of thrifting and it was immediately commandeered by my husband, who is now referring to it as his “DM‘s familiar”. If you click that link back there, it will sort of explain that comment, but seriously, if you have to ask, you won’t really get it. Sorry. But it might be the most exciting thing I’ve ever brought home for him that cost $4.

Anyway, we’re not really into black. Our furniture is mostly walnut (so, dark brown) and we’ve got a fair bit of navy blue around so black doesn’t really work.

As far as pre-painting prep went, there wasn’t much to do with this one. There wasn’t any rust on it or flaking paint so we just wiped it off with a damp cloth to get rid of any surface dust and dirt. We did have to take off the wheels, which were squeaky anyway and had to be treated with WD-40.

Once that was done, we hit it with a coat of primer.

It was a little blotchy, but I knew from John and Sherry’s posts that it’s normal for primer to be blotchy so we didn’t worry about it. The can says it’s okay to add your next coat after an hour, but we decided to wait overnight for the paint to dry, just to be sure it would cure properly.

Then the next day, we went ahead with the gold coat. OMZG. Love. Gold spray paint? A little tacky? Yes. A little fabulous? OH yeah.

Hello, sexy.

AHEM.

Sorry.

Anyway, yeah, we like it. It’s nice that it has wheels so when we’re not playing games, it can go back in the office. And if we forget to put it away, it’s still gold. GOLD.

And…onto the other piece before I really embarrass myself.

This little thing I found for $2 sitting on the floor of the thrift store. I wasn’t quite sure what I would do with it. It was all rusty and sad looking, but I loved the metal grillwork and I knew a little spray paint would perk it right up. It turns out that it’s probably perfect to hold all our spices, but we’ll get to that in a second.

First, I had to deal with that rust somehow. I chose to take a two-fold approach. I scrubbed the rusty flaking parts with the little brass brush and the steel wool.

As you can see though, this didn’t totally fix the problem. The scrubbing revealed a shiny silver metal under the paint and rust. So I removed any rust that was a little pitted until everything was smooth. At that point, the nice hardware store man said I could spray it with this stuff.

The back of the can told me to wash with soap and water and let dry completely so that was the next step.

After that, I sprayed the whole thing with the Rust Reformer and let it dry for the 24 hours the can recommended.

I had to turn it a couple of times to get the Rust Reformer on it from every angle. I’m always a little suspicious of products that do miracles like fix finishes on wood or eliminate rust on metal so at some point I’ll check back in about how it’s doing.

In the meantime, the next step was to prime the piece. Doug actually did this part because I was making dinner so I didn’t get a picture.

After that, I sprayed it with a high gloss white and this little beauty ended up in our kitchen.

I had a bad experience with spray paint as a child (it melted a styrofoam science project) so this was my first outing with it as an adult. I was pretty impressed. I took two sad metal objects and made them all pretty in just a couple of hours, which even included drying time. Consider me converted. Either the Valspar or the Rustoleum worked great for me though the Krylon I bought was decidedly subpar.

Also, die stick die.

So did you have a scarring childhood experience with spraypaint? Have you been spray painting anything lately? Do you have a favorite brand?