Gold magazine rack

October 18, 2012October 18, 2012 LouiseLeave a comment

During the last vergeside collections, I found a wire magazine rack. The kind of ones that libraries use to keep their extensive Mills and Boon collection away from the other books or $2 stores use for toothbrushes or keychains or anything vessel for personally named products that make the worst gifts ever.

Anyway I had a grand idea that I could have it in my house to store my magazines or my Harry Potter books – I probably stole this idea from a blog but I’m going to claim this idea as my own.

Now the reason that this was on the side of road was because it was old, rusty and the white rubber that covered the wire had gone hard and cracked.

Basically a big mess

But it’s ok, right? I can handle this because I’m good at DIYing and all that fancy stuff. Yeah, no. Chipping away that plastic was the worst, most awful thing.

My mum came over for a nice, relaxing visit and ended up having to help me out

I put some newspaper down to collect the plastic crackles but they just went everywhere

So this literally took months to do. Every time I went outside, I’d try and chip off a little bit more. On sunny weekends, I’d sit there and chip away while my cat climbed trees and jumped the fence and generally acted like a cat.

A few weekends ago, the weather warmed up and there was a hint of Spring and I decided to reclaim my courtyard by finishing this project at last. Even though there were little bits of plastic in some corners, I decided it was just too much work and who really cares anyway?

I will now give you a chance to complain about them lazy Gen Ys:

…

Done? OK good. So I sanded off as much of the rust as I good, wiped it all down with a damp cloth and sprayed on some primer.

So after a couple of layers, it was time for the fun part.

Now when it comes to painting something, I like to ask myself, ‘how can I make this as tacky as possible?’ and 99% of the time, the answer is gold. Always gold.

Since I don’t know much about spray paint, I went with the advice of the people at Bunnings and bought the more expensive but much better brand. That’s the one on the left. Now I don’t know if I got a faulty can or what but as you’ve probably figured from the photo, it dripped all over my hands, the spraycan, the ground… basically anywhere but the rack I was trying to paint. It literally covered only about half the rack. So I went back, bought the cheapie brand and it did two layers and I still have a bit left in the can. Lesson of the day: buy the cheap stuff.

Oh and I should probably mention that spray paint goes everywhere, especially when you can’t be bothered with using enough newspaper to cover the ground and now my backyard is gold.

Anyway, I let it dry for a day and ta da! This is the result;