Painted pail

We heat our home solely by wood heat - looooooove - wouldn't trade it for anything. The only downside being the perpetual trail of bark and sawdust that runs from our backdoor through the kitchen and into the living room.  That and the ash that seems to get everywhere. Still wouldn't trade it for anything.

For the last year we've been using old plastic pails to hold our kindling and ash.  Ugh.  Double ugh.  What made them worse is that they're old Kirkland washing detergent pails....not just plain white ones.  I've been dying to find an inexpensive replacement for them...and STAT.  Unfortunately, in our area of town gorgeous antique metal pails are few and far between.  The Horse Barn (store) didn't even have any!  I finally found some galvanized pails at Wholesale sports for a whopping $13 each.  Call me cheap but that is waaay more than I was hoping to pay but I just couldn't look at those plastic pails for another season.  Soooo I splurged.

Ugggggggly plastic pail :(

Shiny new pail!

For the record, it took me longer to get the huge label off of them than it did to finish painting them.  Pain in the you-know-where.

Anywho, I noticed my can of Rustoleum flat black said NO GALVANIZED STEEL. Bummer.  My can of Zinnser Bulls-Eye primer did not. Sooooo  after a quick scuff with some 220 grit sandpaper  I did a light coat of primer followed by a couple light coats of my loverly flat black. 

I'm somewhat new to the spraypaint biz, so I guess I'll wait and find out why I'm not supposed to use Rustoleum on galvanized steel....unless someone already knows and would be willing to share!

Unfortunately I ran out of black before I got around to the other pail.....possibly 'cause I was painting some cute little lamps I found.....

Then I got out my awesome Silhouette machine and made some gorgeous lettering .....IN MY DREAMS.

Um, actually I took a pencil and roughed in some lettering...so not cool...or perfect.  Then I got my trusty paintbrush and filled them in with some antique white acrylic...from the doller store...woo.

I think it dresses things up a bit, don't you? Just try and imagine one on the left hand side that says "ash"!



I'm linkin up to Gail's Catch-as-Catch-Can party at My Repurposed Life!