Weekend Projects: Chairs and Candle Holder

A few weekends ago, Trent and I had a Saturday to just stay home and do a few things at the house. I took that opportunity to take care of a few projects I had been thinking about doing. Turns out that both of the projects I had in mind involved spray painting.

The first was spray painting some metal chairs that we were given from Trent’s parents. These chairs were brought up to Iowa from Mexico many years ago when Trent’s grandparents were down wintering in Texas. They were originally a set of four and Trent’s parents had them for a while. Now, though, Trent’s sister has two of them and we were just given the other two. I think that’s just the best that these chairs are sort of a ‘hand-me-down.’ 

The chairs in their green color as they were when we got them.

When Trent’s parents brought them to our house after we moved in, they gave us permission to paint them however we’d like. They had been a few colors before, so it was up to us to pick the next color!

I knew that I wanted to do something bright, as we have two Adirondack chairs on our deck as well that are dark stained, so I thought something bright would be good. I decided to go with yellow.

I first tried to use a wire brush to get any loose paint off, but that really didn’t do much for me at all. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong, but I just gave up on it eventually… Then I took a hose and washed them all off. The high pressure from the water did get some of the loose paint off, so that worked fine for me.

I then primed the chairs with a white primer. I only had two cans of the primer, which wasn’t enough to cover all of both of the chairs, but it got most of them. The bottom of them didn’t exactly get primed well, but no one will ever know, I’m sure.

After letting that dry for a while, I started with the yellow. I had four cans of the yellow paint and that was just the right amount. I even had a little left over. I started by painting two coats on the chairs just as they stood. I then let them dry for a few hours and then went out again and flipped them over to paint the bottoms.

I let them dry overnight and then flipped them back over and touched up any spots I could see that needed it. When they were all of the way dry, I moved them from the garage out to the deck where they sit now.

I love how they turned out! I can’t wait until we have people over again since we have real chairs for them to sit in! I still want to get some cute outdoor pillows for the chairs to bring some more color to the outside. It’s a great start though. First project = success!

The second little thing I did was paint this candle holder. I found it for $3.00 at a thrift store in town.

I originally had plans to stain it a dark brown, but when I got to that point, it was obvious that it had been painted over at one point and therefore wasn’t going to be able to be stained. And my attempts at sanding it were pretty sad. All those curves and crevices just were too much for my abilities and patience!

So I decided to just spray paint it black. I picked up a .99 cent can of black spray paint from Lowe’s and went to town. It took 2-3 coats in some places, but I think it turned out rather swell.





The top of it is a little crooked (as you can see in the picture above), but if I set it so that it slants backwards, no one will be able to tell. Not too bad for a $4.00 candle holder, if I do say so myself!



We don't have a lot planned for this weekend, so I should be able to find some more things to do. In between my plans to sleep and study, I want to get some more things hung on the walls and do some more decorating and possibly some shopping (for me and the house). It should be a productive few days!

Have a great weekend!