Good Morning, friends! Today is my first official day of summer break, and as I’m typing this, I’m lounging around in my pajamas. I’m ready to have a nice refreshing break from work this summer!
Now that summer is officially here, I have lots of plans which include porch sitting, painting things, lounging, and not much else. 🙂 I’ve been working on making our porch a little bit more enjoyable this season, and I wanted to share a new addition to the front porch. A month or so ago, I added our cable spool table to the porch, and it has been wonderful! I knew that I wanted to add more, so when my father-in-law sent me a picture of a rusty old bar cart asking if I wanted it, I jumped at the chance.
I’ve been desperately trying to keep a few plants alive (not very well, I might add), and I knew an old bar cart would be the perfect thing to house my little plants. The problem was that it was so rusty, I couldn’t even tell what color it was originally. I wanted it to be rusted, but I wanted to see if there was a way to scrub some of the rust off so that some of the original paint was exposed.
I didn’t really want to buy anything to remove the rust with, knowing I would only use it for this project (assuming it even worked) and would then be destined to cluttering the back of my cleaning supply closet. So, I figured I’d do my own thing. Recently, I shared my DIY all-purpose household cleaner, and I’m happy to report that it truly does work for all purposes. You can check out the full article in the link above, but it’s what I used to expose some of the original paint on this little cart.
I generously sprayed the cart completely. I let it sit for about an hour, spraying a bit more at that time (the Texas heat didn’t quite allow for a soak, as it just dried it up). After about two hours of the solution on the cart, I began scrubbing with the same brush we generally use to clean the grill. As I would scrub a certain spot, I would hose it down. If it needed more scrubbing, I would spray a little more solution on it, and immediately continue scrubbing.
Eventually I began to see little spots of green paint emerge from behind the scrub brush. I’m not going to lie and say this was super easy; it took quite a bit of elbow grease. I did intentionally stop at this point, since I wanted the cart to keep a bit of it’s rusty charm. If you have a bit more muscle than I do, you could certainly scrub off more rust than I was able to.
This little cart makes the porch just a little bit more cozy! And I’m absolutely thrilled with how it turned out, with it’s rusty, chippy goodness. I think once I get up from this couch, I’ll make my way out there to enjoy this little spot. Do you have something old and rusty? I’d be willing to bet you can clean it up a bit with some elbow grease and some items you have around the house!
Well, that’s all for today, friends! Have a fabulous day!
