Planters 101

At the beginning of summer everyone enjoys starting their summer activities. For some it may be mowing the grass, getting lawn furniture out, planting their garden. For us, in a new home it was a little bit of everything. As my recent posts explained we have been remodeling the back yard to fit our needs and wants. We added an actual fire pit, a little cozy get away, and a picnic table. To add something simple to our house we decided to add flowers, a little life and color goes a long way. In a recent post, Planting Season, I explained our decision of plants. When I left that post, other than my three hanging baskets, I had no idea where or what I was going to do with all of these plants. So I set out on a venture a few days later, D and I were given five big cement pots my grandparents had for “like 100 years”. We decided to put these pots to use. We figured they would add character to our home. However, before they could start providing us with the character we wanted, they needed a little work.

Here is a little DYI on how to make a “little work” into a character builder for your home. My cement pots had been painted many times before, so they needed a fresh coat of paint and a little love.

Supplies: paintbrush, cardboard, outdoor water based paint, and a scraper.

1. I placed cardboard down on my garage floor. I chose to do it inside to give my pots ample time to dry. I also thought this would help keep the pots cleaner while painting.

2. Next, I took my scraper and scraped all the bubbled or lose paint that was left on the pots from last year. This is key! scrapping the pots allows the new paint to stick better and coat easier.

Some pots had very little scraping done to them, while others had A LOT.

3. Once the scraping was done I painted my pots with a white water base out door paint. It is important to make sure the paint covers all the nooks and crannys of the pot. The spots that were scraped could have used a second coat of paint however, I did not.  

I managed to do all five of these pots in one evening; left them dry overnight and started planting the next afternoon. The project was very easy and not as time consuming as I thought. I give us a gold star for reusing pots that we had and adding character to our house! Who would have thought!