Since hubby and I are thrifty, we purchased most of the shutters from Craigslist sellers. A few we found (and I kid you not) still at the house but hidden beneath a giant clump of pampas grass. The recycled shutters came in a rainbow of faded colors. What I wanted was Hunter Green. Enter My Repurposed Life and the Wagner Power Painter Plus Giveaway to make our lives--and getting to Hunter Green--much easier.
Here is a picture of some of the shutters prior to painting. The hunk in the picture is my hubby. The shed in the back is our NEXT project. (But please don't tell him!)
Before painting, we primed all the shutters. We discovered the need to prime plastic shutters the hard way. If you don't prime, the paint bubbles up and peels off in large swatches. It was a sizable mistake which amounted to a ton of extra work and an encyclopedic amount of expletives and unmentionable choice phrases. We chose to hand-roll the primer:
Primer applied, nothing to do but spray and hang, right? Not exactly. We carefully read the instructions, assembled the sprayer and, as directed, added the lubricating oil Wagner provided. My hubby then took the sprayer on a test run over some leftover cardboard:
Nothing to do now but paint:
Zip! Zap! Ka-pow! With a few quick flicks of the wrist, my husband knocked out all ten shutters. So take that, Mom! Here's visual proof of why I didn't need to marry a Rockefeller!
The Wagner Power Painter did a nice job, but you must follow the provided instructions. Some things we learned through trial and error. 1. You do need to thin the paint before putting it into the sprayer, and 2. You need to keep the painter straight and at a set distance from the surface you're painting.
Thanks to Wagner and Gail for making our work much easier!
