So I’ve never been much of a home-improvement-do-it-yourself-er, so when I noticed my lawn furniture’s paint chipping, I started to think of replacing the set, even though it was found originally in front of someone’s house with a sign that said “Free stuff.” Then it dawned on me: since the set was free and I was thinking of getting rid of it anyway, why not make one more ditch effort to retain the set’s former glory? (Well I had never seen its glory exactly. When it got to me it was a mixture of red, white, yellow, and brown, as the paint was chipped revealing all previous colors.) So I thought, why not take a stab at painting it myself?

I asked around and apparently all you need to paint lawn furniture is a wire brush (to scrap off dust and loose paint), about 4 cans of spray paint (I used Rust-Oleum textured durable finish in flat black [the paint guy steered me to the right stuff]) and an old sheet I didn’t mind throwing away after spray-painting atop of.

So I spaced all the lawn furniture on sed sheet out in the middle of my back yard (so as not to accidentally paint my patio or my house), then I scrubbed off all the loose paint revealing that my table and chairs were really something more reminiscent of a Jackson Pollock painting; this part actually took the longest. Next I sprayed all surfaces in a back-in-forth motion while staying at least 10 inches apart…actually I didn’t. I read that part later while I was reading how long it takes to dry (1 to 2 hours to touch and 48 hours to dry completely). I think it would be better to stay at least 10 inches from what you’re spraying to avoid dripping. I sprayed anywhere from 10 to 3 inches away from my target. I’ll let you know how well that works out but so far it seems to be fine.

Last, I left the chairs out in the yard for two days, (you should be aware of the weather. If it is going to rain you can carefully move them under an overhang after a couple of hours) touched them up several times (I allotted 1 of the 4 cans for future touch-ups), and when I was sure they were dry returned them to my patio and ditched the sheet. Fairly simple.