This was the Inspiration

The past few weeks, I’ve really been concentrating on getting the outside gardens and patios looking pretty for Spring and Summer. Once I took a good hard look at the pair of metal benches on the patio, I realized just how grubby they were beginning to look. Rust and lichen were replacing the original painted finish. I’ve actually been thinking about repainting them for a while, but with all the dark brick on the patio, I didn’t want to do them in black again… but didn’t want a bright bold color either… this was the inspiration!

Pretty much every color we select for something, whether inside or outside, needs some sort of inspiration… something that visually makes sense for it to pull from or accent with or refer to. The new umbrella on the outside dining table was just that inspiration I needed to make a paint selection for the benches I was finally getting around to re-painting.

This is our third summer living here in our 100 year old house. The 1st year, we were still finishing renovating inside and just trying to make a basic dent in the very overgrown and neglected yard. Fine tuning wasn’t on the radar that year.

Last year, I was gone most of the Summer and just didn’t have time to do too much outside detail work. (Here you can check out where I was last summer… think: Maine coast!)

So this is the year to finally get to some of the outside details that have been overlooked… and WOW, these benches looked pretty bad!

You know how it is…

sometimes as stuff is deteriorating right before our very eyes, we just don’t notice the slow decay…

For sure that was happening to these benches. I’ve had them for probably 15 or 20 years, at least, and I love that they rock/glide and don’t need cushions. But their original black finish was totally dull and getting replaced with rust and lichen.

Super simple fix, once I decided on a color…

and this was the inspiration:

Currently the walls and floor of the patio are brick…

It’s a lot of dark red/brown! I keep thinking I’ll whitewash it, but so far, gotta be honest… I haven’t had the gumption to tackle that project. So instead, I decided to accent with more lighter things on the patio.

Enter, the new umbrella for the table… and enter, the inspiration I was looking for to select the color for these aging benches. I love that blue/green/gray stripe in the fabric, and that’s the color I wanted to repeat on the benches.

Finding it in a spray paint at the hardware store is another story…

I’ve learned that the color of spray paint increases intensity once you spray it on the item, so choose wisely… and muted-ly… (I don’t think that’s a word, but you get my gist, (uh… not sure if that’s a word either?) but choose a color that is a bit of a muted version of what you’re going for)

So with my husband’s help in the spray paint aisle, we selected this color:

The color is called ‘Verde Green’. And ‘bonus’ the hammered finish will be forgiving if the benches aren’t totally smooth.

So super simple here’s what I did to clean them up:

With the wire brush and it came right off, down to a smooth finish, ready for paint. (This is the same brush I used on the concrete lions I found at a tag sale)

Then with my handy-finger-saving-spray-paint-sprayer-attachment I’ve been telling you about, I started spraying.

That’s it!

Two coats and so, so easy… once I found the inspiration for the color that is. 😉

Now they look great on the patio…

They are much lighter than the black was, and yet not too bright, which would have really looked out of place on this patio.

Here’s a full view of the patio…

See all that brick I’m talking about?!

Well, ignore that a little, and just use squinted eyes to see how the umbrella and benches work together.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to painting that brick, but until then, I’m happy with the newly painted benches on the patio.

In fact, we just had a surprise birthday party for a friend on the patio this last weekend and the benches were in demand… So glad I got them painted, so no one wound up with rust stains on their britches. 😉

So, this was the inspiration for me to paint the benches… What’s been your inspiration to get a project done?

Thank you for stopping by, I appreciate you reading along.

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