Happy Early Birthday, Charlie Grace!

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

So I know it's actually Brian's birthday, but he's out of town! So in the spirit of birthdays, I've been finishing up this early birthday gift for our almost one year old!

Happy early birthday, Charlie Grace! I made this:

So the kiddos desperately needed some outdoor toys. We wanted a play place but as you know, we are in (seemingly endless) transition. Therefore, it's absolutely not a good time for a big fancy structure better suited for a permanent home. So I hit up Craigslist and found a Little Tykes 8 in 1 set. $150. Boom.

I am so excited about this set. Have you checked out the price of these things?! On Amazon, they are over $800! So, I'm considering it a totally great deal to have picked up this one, in fairly good condition, for a fraction of that. Of course when we got the set, it looked like any toy that has been sitting outside looks: dirty, faded, and covered in U.G.S (unidentifiable green stuff).

We lugged it home in our trailer, took it apart, and got to work scrubbing it down. Poor Charlie was totally put to work for her own birthday gift!

You know when you decide to take on a DIY project and buy all of the materials and then as soon as you get started you instantly regret not just spending the extra money to buy it already done?

This was not one of those projects!! It really wasn't that bad! I would totally do this again. It was a beautiful evening and we got a lot of work done. Plus it was a fun project to work on while the whole family hung out outside.

After it was clean, I got to work spray painting. I'm not an expert spray painter, so there are definitely some spots that are not exactly perfect but you can't tell on a galloping horse and the kids definitely won't care. Look at the difference one coat makes though! These slides were the same color before I got started.

We chose various colors of Rustoleum indoor/outdoor spraypaint in Satin and then also got a can of Krylon Cover Maxx because the Rustoleum didn't carry the blue we wanted. FYI: The Rustoleum definitely had better coverage. With the exception of the white (obviously) all of the Rustoleum colors covered well with one coat. The Krylon needed two. It took a total of 13 cans of spray paint to cover this baby, bringing our total to just over $200!

The biggest issue I had was my hand and forearm were nearly paralyzed by the time I finished spraying out 13 cans of spray paint. I'm only slightly exaggerating here. Next time I will invest in one of those fancy gun things.