How to paint outdoor chairs with spray paint

Do you have chairs that look sad like these? We acquired these chairs when a friend was moving and didn’t want to take them. So I guess we inherited them? Ha. We have replaced the outdoor seat cushions a few times over the years, but the last few years we have neglected them. The poor, sad chairs have needed love for awhile now, but my kids speak up when they are hungry and these chairs sat too quietly for too long. They were easy to forget.

The other day I was wandering the garden aisles of Walmart and I ran into these universal outdoor seat cushions. The bright floral pattern spoke to me, and I knew the cushions were exactly what those sad chairs needed.

Side note: Do you notice that sometimes the pictures on the Walmart website do NOT do the product justice? This is definitely one of those instances. Look how bright and happy the cushions are in real life! {No photoshop color enhancements either, folks.}

After I removed the old cushions, I sprayed off the chairs with the hose to clean them up and remove any dirt. Then I let them dry completely before starting to paint them.

Whenever you are painting outdoor wrought iron/metal furniture, make sure you use a brand that specifically says it adheres to metal.  Plus if you use a paint and primer in one, it will help the paint to last. If you need tips on spray painting, check out my “Everything I know about spray paint” post.

I sprayed the dingy metal chairs with this brand new color of spray paint from Rustoleum. It’s called Green Citrus in GLOSS, and I love the way they turned out. I’m going to be 100% transparent here though. The spray paint struggled coming out of the nozzle at first. I tried 3 different cans before getting one that worked perfectly.

Pick up this color at your local Home Depot.

For the cans that struggled, I learned a trick that saved me! I could NOT get the paint to spray very well if the cans were right side up. Maybe it was user error {but I’m not a newby when it comes to spray paint, in fact, spray painting is kinda my thing}, so I’m guessing I’m not the first person to encounter this problem. The Rust-Oleum Universal cans are specifically suppose to spray right side up, on the side, and upside down. But, these cans struggled until I turned them upside down. They worked like a DREAM upside down. So, there’s a little tip for you. Turn that bad boy upside down if you are having trouble with the paint coming out. When I tried to paint with the can right side up, it sprayed out only air and no pigment.

The chairs look brand new again, and they are the perfect new splash of happy color in our backyard.

They go perfectly by our block wall mural.  Want to know something CRAZY!?! It’s been almost five years since we painted that mural in our backyard! I AM DYING at that thought.

After two years of having sad chairs, I’m pretty proud of our chair makeovers. The best part?

1. The total cost for this project was under $25.

2. This project took less than 30 minutes from start to finish.

THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ‘BOUT! {said in my Gru voice from Despicable Me}.

xoxo,

Brooke