The $8 Jar: A Makeover Experiment

I'm taking a break from pool and deck posts and showing you something that's actually finished ;) I mentioned a while back that was I playing around with the hallway and kitchen and re-doing things a little here and there now that we have lived with/in both spaces for a bit. I did start that but put it on the back-burner while we concentrated on the outside. For the hallway I especially wanted to include a bit more colour as I felt the space was a bit dull.

I found this jar in an Asian supermarket in the city and really liked the shape and thought I would experiment with using spray paint to change the colour and then place the jar on the console table in the hallway. So far everything I've attacked with spray paint has worked pretty well so I was keen to see if this would work too. I didn't mind it's 'before' state either, but at $8 I thought I could risk it.

I used the same all-purpose primer I used on both the drinks tub and the lamp base. I left that to dry for a day before spraying the knob on the lid gold and then taping that up and applying 3 coats (leaving to dry in between coats) of pink paint. Then I decided I didn't like the pink - it was a dusty pink which just wasn't vibrant (that's the colour in the bottom right-hand side picture, when still wet). I thought I'd try another brand of pink (which interestingly had exactly the same colour lid as the first pink) and applied that over the top and this was much more along the lines I was going for. The great thing is that if you get any drip marks you can just lightly sand them back with fine grit (I used 240) sand paper and touch up with another light spray.

I'm pretty pleased with the result - it's a quick and cheap makeover. The moral of the story is that if you see a jar or vase which you like the shape of but not the colour, consider spraying it. Bonus is that if you ever tire of the colour you can just spray over it! I'd definitely try this again, perhaps even trying a pattern or maybe even a monogram.