BBQ Upcycle Hometalk Project

At the beginning of October, we had a Hometalk Meetup in Round Top for the Antiques Fair. It was great to meet other Bloggers from across the state an search through some great stuff…everything to include handmade, refinished and just plain old junk. I had always wanted to go, but had never made the trek until then.

As part of the Meetup, however, we were challenged to find something that we could Re/Up-Cycle.

And look at what I came across!!!

I have been searching for the letters BBQ to hang on my exterior wall, under the patio, above the grill. Boy was I a lucky girl. And for much less expensive had I bought them already finished. If you look a little closer at them, you can see how very rusty (dirty to be more specific) they look.

Rather than trying to spend a lot of time cleaning them, I painted them with a metal primer. And it only took 1 coat of paint.

You can see that my hand is not the one holding the paint brush in the picture above. It was Andreas’. Nice man to help me out. I thought he really wanted to contribute, but he just wanted to get them done and get them out of his garage. Ha! Of course, getting them out of the garage wasn’t happening soon because I had to let the primer dry. Once dry, I started to paint them with the red color I chose. I used a Rust-Oleum Enamel paint that Stops Rust (or so the label says).

The first coat was a bit streaky, as expected.

And as such, had to give it a second coat. I did not know that Enamel Paint takes so long to dry! Make sure you plan ahead for that. Definitely a full day needed! Holes had to be drilled in order to hang them on the wall.

And here is the finished product!

I will re-post when I finally have the chance to hang them…hopefully sooner rather than later. While I would have liked to have found something that would have been more exciting to Up/Re-Cycle…I am glad that I found something I had been looking for, for quite a long time. And again, it was great to hang out with some fabulous Bloggers:

Lisa from the Pennington Point
Julie from Lilacs and Longhorns
Randi from Dukes and Duchesses

A great big Thank You goes to Julie from Lilacs and Longhorns for hanging back with me, ready to drag along anything that I bought as she had a great cart to carry our possessions. I was a bit unprepared. I have another project that I will post as well in the next week. So if you didn’t find any inspiration in this one, maybe the next one. I plan to make it out to the next one in the spring and hope to find something even better to feature. BTW…for the BBQ letters, I would like to take it a step further and add lights. So stay tuned for that later (if I actually get around to doing it). 🙂