My first DIY

It's probably not my first. I mean I have re-done stuff in the past. But I went at this one with a purpose, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

Let me start out by giving you a brief history on the piece. Every year at Christmas time, Red's family has a get together and we play dirty bingo. There are often 15-20 people playing and it's actually a pretty good time. A couple of years ago, we were playing the annual dirty bingo. There was a large pink Victoria's Secret bag in play, and it became the hot item to steal in this dirty bingo game. We ended up with the bag and in it was a decorative plate. Nice, but ugg-lee.

It was a color green that didn't go with a single thing in our home. Its been sitting atop our microwave as a catchall for the last couple of years.

I didn't feel the least bit sorry about making it my first DIY project.

The plate:

Please forgive the lighting in some of these photos. Many of them were taken in the garage and all I had was overhead and flash lighting.

I began by sanding 'er down to give the primer a little something to grip. In all of the DIY's I've been reading via Kimba's site, sanding seems to be the one step you just can't ever escape.

Please don't mind the big, ugly scar on my hand. Thank you and have a nice day.

I had to whipe it down really well after the sanding. I didn't want any little imperfections.

Next, I went and dug up the oldest, most rusted out hoe that I could find to pry the lid off of the primer can.



Now, I understand that there is also really good spray primer that you can buy for these kind of projects. It was my intention to buy the spray stuff because it was cheaper and I didn't need to be all that fancy about my first DIY. But the guy helping me at Lowe's just wouldn't stop rattling on about this amazing can-do-anything primer that I finally gave in, grabbed a can and ran away.

And now that I think of it, I don't know if that little tool is actually called a hoe.

I put on two layers of primer. Which come to think of it, was probably one or two too many. But whatever. I guess I didn't know if spray paint would stick to such a slick gloss or not.





I then put two coats of spray paint on there. And forgot how much I loved spray paint. It's so versatile.




At this point, it was still pretty flat after it had dried. But luckily I read enough other DIY blogs to remember to pick up a can of gloss spray. A coat of that and half the day to dry and I'm pretty danged happy with the result. Now it has a 'home' in my house rather than collecting junk.



Linked up to Kimba's DIY Thursday at ASPTL!