Here's the "before" picture of the bucket:
I liked it the way it was, and it fit the color scheme of the nursery perfectly...but I wanted it to have a little bit of extra umph. And fun. It is a baby's room, after all. I knew I wanted to paint either the inside or the outside green, and I went back and forth for a couple months over which would be best. I ultimately decided to paint the outside, but then I couldn't decide what the best way to actually paint it would be. Spray paint or craft paint by brush? The cheap side of me won out and I decided to use craft paint I already had.
I cleaned the inside and outside of the bucket with my stainless steel cleaner, just so the year and a half of dust and whatnot would be gone before I applied the paint. I didn't have a paint color that was what I wanted, so I mixed up a new batch of green.
There's the ratio of yellow to green (a dark green) that I used, and here's the finished color mixed.
Kind of Nickelodeon slime-y, isn't it? I made sure to mix quite a bit of the new color, since it's a moderately sized surface area and I knew there would be multiple coats.
The inside of the bucket, as you can see, is painted a glossy, smooth white. The outside, though, is a rough galvanized metal. I knew the first coat would basically be a weak primer and nothing more, serving as a base that would allow future coats to stick to the metal better. Coat 1:
Super rough. Gotta love those brush strokes. Coat 2 was a little bit better, but not a whole lot. Here you can see the difference between Coat 2 (on the right side of the seam) and Coat 3 (on the left side of the seam).
I thought (really hoped) that Coat 3 would do the trick, but when I woke up this morning and came out to the family room, all kinds of brush streaks greeted me on my dried bucket. Rats. Thankfully, though, Coat 4 was definitely all it needed (and a good thing too, because I think I was going to call it quits by that time anyway). It's not perfect, and there are a couple of spots where you can see a brush stroke or imperfection of some kind, but I'll take it.
Isn't that a great color? I love it. It would have/could have been done at that point, except I noticed when I was cleaning the bucket that the whole bottom was scratched up and looked dirty. I really could have just left it, since the bucket will be filled with books most of the time, but I wanted to at least look for a solution first. The solution came in the form of some printed contact paper from WalMart. At $6 per 36 square foot roll, it was hard to pass up.
It's not grey, and there isn't much beige in the room at all, but I decided it was okay for a couple reasons. It's still a neutral color, there's a lot of white in the print to balance it out, there's a tiny amount of beige in the rug, and I plan on introducing a couple baskets into the room eventually, which are kind of beige-y in color. Sounded good to me.
I used the bottom of the bucket to trace the shape I needed on the contact paper and then cut it out.
I put the contact paper in the bottom of the bucket, and like I suspected it was just a hair too big (the bottom of the bucket doesn't account for the walls of the bucket, which would make the size just a smidge smaller). I trimmed just the slightest amount off the entire circumference of the circle and tried its fit again. Perfect. All that was left was to take the paper backing of the contact paper off and put it in, sticky side down (duh).
There were some (many) air bubbles in the contact paper despite my efforts, so all I needed to do was poke tiny holes in each of them with a needle and press the air out. It's like they were never there.
If I had it to do over again, I think I should have splurged on the spray paint. It would have saved me time (probably wouldn't have needed 4 coats), it would have covered even more evenly in the end, and it really wouldn't have cost me more money in the end because even though I used paint I already had, I used a whole lot of it and I'll need to replace it at some point. That being said, I'm still happy with how it turned out and I think it's super cute. And now I have the contact paper that I'll use to line the dresser drawers after I paint them!
Here's the nursery to-do list now:
- 1 Samuel 1:27-28 chalkboard
- quote for inside side table frame
- hang all pictures
- turn green bottle into a lamp
- recover lamp shade? new lamp shade?
- paint dressers white
- paint side table white
- paint side table drawer pull silver
- make mobile for over crib
paint metal pail for books- clean out closet and closet drawers
- clean out dresser drawers
- line dresser drawers with contact paper
- organizers for inside of dresser drawers
- hem curtains and hang them...or new curtains?
- storage system and bins
- get small lamp for changing table
- make/buy crib skirt
- metal trash can for diapers
basket with liner for hamper- shelf over storage system?
- new overhead light?
No comments:
Post a Comment