Hello sweet friends! Sometimes you have to put away the fun projects and tackle the necessary, less fun ones, right? I have been busy working on refreshing a few things around our house that have been neglected. On the list were these outdoor light fixtures we have hanging on either side of our garage and French doors in our bedroom:
They get direct sun most of the day and the finish has become so faded. I’ve been telling my Hubby that I need him to take them down for me so I can spray paint them, but I tired of waiting so I decided to take matters into my own hands.
Since I don’t do electrical, I needed a way to paint them while they were still hanging, and in a way that would not allow any paint overspray to get on the stone.
I came up with a great plan! First, here is how they turned out:
Better, no? They look brand new again!
To make this happen, I had to get a little crafty. I found an old piece of foam core in my garage that I no longer needed (somewhere around 3’X4′ from Hobby Lobby), and cut it in half lengthwise with a razor knife, then I cut those pieces in half again lengthwise to get four pieces. I cut about a foot off of two the sides and created a rectangle out of the pieces.
I used duct tape to hold the pieces together.
(This duct tape was left over from when I did a project for Duck Brand tape. See what I made out of their tape HERE!)
Then I grabbed my roll of brown kraft paper and cut a piece just bigger than the rectangle. Now I was ready to get started.
I first removed the bottom piece from my outdoor fixture:
This is one of the lights beside my French doors upstairs.
I removed the glass globe, and sprayed the bottom piece with (affiliate link) Oil Rubbed Bronze by Rustoleum spray paint:
Next I removed the bulb and covered the socket, and unscrewed the fixture from the wall just enough so I could slide my paper behind it. I cut a slit down from the top in order to slide it under the light:
I covered the slit with tape.
Then I used duck tape to hold the box to the wall from the top.
Then I was ready to spray the wall fixture without fear of overspraying on our pretty stone!
Voila!
Don’t forget the screws:
I think they turned out pretty awesome!
Remember to tighten back the screws holding the fixture on the wall.
It saved my Hubby the trouble of having to take them completely down, and I know he was thrilled about that! (You’re welcome, Hubby.)
Here’s another project we tackled that I didn’t share on the blog, our DIY cedar shutters:
We had large heavy metal shutters up there before, but they had rusted out in places, so we were looking for an inexpensive replacement. I found those wrought iron straps on Amazon HERE, and the large faux hammered nails HERE.
They worked out great to dress up the plain cedar shutters we built.
If you missed the rest of my front yard garden tour, you can see it HERE.
This was a bit out of my normal thrift store makeover post, but it was still a makeover, right? I thought someone else out there might find this helpful.
I’ll be back on Tuesday with my Trash-to Treasure girls sharing a real piece of trash turned treasure. I found this footboard on the side of the road:
I’ll have to keep you in suspense wondering what I did with it until then! 🙂
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