Spray Painting Old Decor – A Quick Fix

We recently moved from a larger house in Michigan that housed all 17 of us – yes, I said 17. I have 15 children. If you want to do a little reading on our family and my life these past few years, visit my family blog at: Mom of Many. Below you can see a picture of the last time we were all together in 2004.

We weren’t able to downsize when our last 3 children moved out, or to put it less graciously, get rid of all the junk, because we had our house on the market for nearly 3 years.

All our stuff we needed to get out of the house to improve the look while it was on the market went into boxes and were piled up in the garage.

We had to put on the “face.” You know the, “Come look at our house – we are perfect, tidy and don’t really live here, we have a show home everyone dreams of,” kind of face.

To sell your home you have to make it perfect – no sense in fighting it. It’s what must be.

It’s called staging.

So, since it all went in boxes, we moved a mountain of possessions when we relocated to Wisconsin.

And yippee! … we got to rent two self storage units to house all the junk while we rented a tiny house and looked for our final resting place –  our “forever, never gonna leave it, we’re going to die here” house.

When we did finally find our forever home, we set to unpacking and sorting 30 years of accumulated possessions.

N.O.T.F.U.N.

Enter “Hey I could use this and don’t have to throw it away,” mind set.

I don’t believe I’m a pack-rat. I prefer the label, “re-purposer.”

Since we’re a bit short on cash but not ideas, I have searched places like Pinterest and DIY blogs to find out ways to update without emptying our wallet – which by the way is usually empty anyway. There’s no shame in being broke. It happens to the best of us.

Have you ever heard anyone say, “It’s not a sin to be poor, but that doesn’t mean you have to be dirty. A bar of soap doesn’t cost very much.”? Well, I apply that same thought process to having an inviting home.

There is no shame in being broke, but there is no excuse for having a boring home.

Here is an example of how you can re-purpose an outdated decoration without much effort, time or money.

Years ago I bought several baskets for less than a dollar at Shipshewana. I was decorating in the Country theme back then, so baskets were a cheap and versatile way to decorate. Now that I’m into the Shabby Chic and Modern Traditional, I am finding a lot of my country deco just doesn’t cut it any more. But like I said, I like to re-purpose.

So here is a picture of the basket – old and outdated. I have so many of these from days gone by…

So, I grabbed my handy spray can (I used (afflink) Rustoleum dark walnut satin spray paint because I like the way it sprays) and 30 seconds and 30 cents later I have re-purposed an old basket by lightly dusting it with white spray paint.

I added flowers to the brown basket and voila! It looks like something I could have paid $10+ for.

Since I paid under $1 for it years ago and used silk flowers I had packed away from my daughter’s wedding 8 years ago, it really was a cheap addition to my deco.  I put the brown basket out on my deck – see the fall porch here.

Here are the baskets after I painted them:

To add flowers I just grabbed the bunch, gathered the stems with a zip tie and cut just below it.

See the zip tie on the stems? Not real classy, but functional. Now here is the finished product:

For pennies on the dollar I have a pretty basket with flowers.

I had considered trying to sell my baskets and flowers at a garage sale, but could have only gotten maybe a quarter for each of them.

This way I have a brand new looking flower basket for my front porch for little outlay.

Since I am a frugal person, I also like the fact that I can have an expensive looking decoration out on the porch that didn’t cost much – if it blows away or is damaged by the weather, I’ve not lost much. I can always make another one!

Here is an old chair I spray painted to use on my porch – yep, you can paint just about anything.

And being we  talked about flower arranging just a bit, please come see my DIY Poinsettia Flower Arrangement and my Fall Flower Arrangement in a pumpkin.

Thanks for stopping by – I’d love to hear about your projects.

XOXO

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