No. 438

I love anything with numbers and letters!

Today I was thinking about what to do with a few pieces I got at different sales in the last few weeks, two galvanized buckets and a nice big galvanized tub. They were in good shape, but not too pretty or interesting on their own.






I painted the outside of them in a soft blue from Sherwin Williams called Blue Heron. I did not paint the handles or the top rim. Next up, some easy stenciling. I wanted to play with No. 438, the address of the house for our upcoming Tag Sale.






I first traced the stencil on paper just to get an idea of spacing. When I was ready to paint, I positioned the stencil with painter's tape. I poured a bit of paint on a Chinet paper plate. They just seem to work really well for blotting. I dipped a foam stencil sponge in the paint very lightly, then dabbed the excess on the plate to blot. Less is definitely better when stenciling. Then I used a dabbing motion to apply the paint to the buckets and carefully removed the stencil. Here I used a nice dark blue. I did this project in assembly line fashion - the N on all three pieces first, then each following letter or number. By the time I got back to the first piece, the paint was dry enough that it didn't smear and I could stencil the next letter. I painted the base color the day before and the stenciling project took under an hour.






I'm going to use one of the buckets for a trash can in our bathroom.



I painted a little shelf the very same light blue color. Here's the before - yuk.





And the after - pretty. ... I think they will look great together in the bathroom.

And the tub is perfect for on the front porch, filled with flowers of course. Our Tag Sale is in September, so maybe some chrysanthemums.

I think these pieces are cool, super functional and now have some real personality!

An update since this post was originally written - My daughter Megan noticed that my blog suddenly got really popular in Utah. She did a little checking and discovered that Salt Lake City news station Studio 5 did a story on curb appeal and included a link to this post! You can read the story here. Not sure how they ever found me, but I am really flattered and very excited! If you are a reader from Utah, thanks so much for stopping by!

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