Thursday, July 7, 2011

Outdoor light makeover

As I may or may not have mentioned before, we live in a 2 bedroom town home with an itty bitty back yard that is well...gross.  We never go out there.  Instead we play out front or on the deck.  I love our deck.  It's big enough to hold our grill, table and chairs and my makeshift sandbox for the girls with plenty of room to spare.


We even have a little kiddie pool that I fill up and the girls cool off while I blog and we listen to Justin Bieber over and over again (ugh).

Since we spend so much time out there in the summer I have been trying to "decorate" it a little bit.   I planted some vegetables and herbs, bought a bright tablecloth, and a new welcome mat (helps keep too much sand from coming in the house).


Yesterday I tackled our sad little outdoor light.  I had planned to buy a new one but didn't want to spend a lot of money.  To buy one that looks exactly the same runs about 5 bucks.  Which isn't bad at all but if I am going to take the time to replace the light I'd rather replace it with something I like.  So I decided to just use what I already had...spray paint!!

I forgot a before picture (DOH!) but it was shiny brass with a ton of rust, aka UGH-LY!  Here is a picture after I primed it.


And I could not get the glass part off so I covered it up with some paper.  Don't you love my fabulous taping job, HAHAHA! It was like an oven in that sun so I slapped that paper up quick!

You can see the rust in this picture...


Next I sprayed it with some ORB (oil rubbed bronze).


 Touched up the wood plaque thing with some white paint and voila!!


I think for free it's a nice improvement!!  The rust bits kind of look intentional now with the ORB paint.
So now I can enjoy my ice tea while sitting under our umbrella and admire our "new" porch light!
Where do you spend most of your summer days?  Do you try to "decorate" your outdoor space?

7 comments:

  1. Nice job. We've got rusted brass lights on our house too and have been dying to replace them. Maybe I should do the paint trick... Thanks for the insiration/idea! :)

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  2. I did the same thing to my outdoor lighting!!! They look awesome! Love the black.

    I am in the process of sprucing up our patio as well. My biggest job is creating some sort of living space on the teeny tiny deck, :( I would Love some ideas for those of us with little to no yard!

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  3. it looks so much better and just "fresher". those are those tedious litlte projects that need to be done,but make the home loo so much better.... kinda like painting foundation. ;)

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  4. Nice! The ORB makes a huge difference. I love your taping job - it's totally how I would do it too, haha.

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  5. Looks GREAT Andi! SO much better! I love your little sand box too, and your new mat! We are in the process of landscaping our front yard, but as soon as we do, it will be a nice relaxing space too :)

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  6. Nice work! And I bet every time you look at it you will enjoy it and your craftiwork (can you make that a word similar to handiwork? not sure... but you get it right?)
    Cheers!

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  7. This is definitely one of my summer projects. The good news is that my glass comes off. I just have to convince hubby that we can spray them while they're still on the house. Thanks for the inspiration.

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