How to Age Galvanized Metal

 

Last week I shared with you a fun painting technique to make freshly painted items look old.  Go HERE to see it again.  I promised to share how I also turned the new galvanized metal tub into one that looks old, too.

 

I started with this shiny new tub I found at Tractor Supply.  It was the perfect size to fit on the springs of the old chair I was using as a planter.  But the one problem with the tub was that it was just too shiny and perfect for my aged chair.

 

After doing some searching online for a solution, I made a trip to my local Lowe's but they didn't have the product I was looking for.  After reading a lot of labels and remembering some of the things I'd read about aging new metals, I purchased a bottle of Professional Strength Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner.  It says right on the front of the bottle "Danger - corrosive".  Just what I was looking for!  The ingredients showed the active ingredient is hydrochloric acid, which I thought would dull the shininess to give the look I wanted.  

 

Since I chose to start on this project at night, I placed the tub in my driveway and covered it well with the Lysol.  Be careful!  Gloves are probably a good idea (don't ask me if I used them!).

 

...

 

 I went back inside for about 20 minutes and tried to wait patiently.  I was excited to see if it was going to work! I don't know if my next step was really necessary but I wanted to make sure the process was working.  It looked like it already was, but for good measure I took my heat gun and applied heat all around the tub. 

 

 

If I had done this on a bright, sunny day I may have tried just placing it in the hot sunshine instead of using the heat gun.  I ended up leaving the tub sitting in my driveway all night with the Lysol on it. The next morning, I did place the tub  in the sunshine for a little while before I washed all of the Lysol off with a water hose and let it dry.  And this is how it turned out:

 

I didn't apply the Lysol to the inside of the tub because I wasn't sure if it would leave a residue behind that would kill the flowers I was going to plant in it.  It worked out fine because the potting soil filled up most of the interior any way. 

 

 And with just one bottle of Lysol toilet bowl clean and a little time, the "aging" process was complete!

 



Looking Old

 

Did you think I'd forgotten about you?  No way!  I've just been super busy with projects and getting out and about to find great "new" pieces of furniture. 

 

AND I've been busy stocking my space at Old South Antique Mall in preparation for this weekend's big sale.  Each vendor was asked to place a live plant, flowers or a flowering plant in their booth.  Almost immediately, I thought about a great old wooden chair I had in my garage that I could use to make a porch planter.  In its prime it was upholstered, but that was long ago and now the only things left other than the frame were wonderful old, rusty springs.  I had a vision for how I wanted this project to turn out and it came pretty close to what I had in mind.

 

 

 

Actually, it turned out better than I had planned.  If I had known it was going to turn out so well, I would have taken a before picture.  Try to picture the chair with no paint or varnish - only dry looking old wood.  I knew I wanted to paint the chair frame but I didn't want it to look like new paint.  So I lightly brushed on CeCe Caldwell's Simply White, dry brushing in some areas and using more paint in others.  After the first coat, I spotted the bleed through I told you about here.  But instead of trying to block and hide it, I decided to let it show to add to the aged look. 

 

I also knew I wanted some crackly texture.  But I didn't want the usual all over crackle. I also wanted a more natural looking texture so I came up with this modified technique:

 

1)  After the first layer of paint had dried, I chose the areas I wanted to look aged, crackly and crusty and applied regular school glue to a small chip brush then applied the glue to the chair frame, working on one small area at a time. Some areas had a thick layer of glue applied and some areas had less.

 

2)  IMMEDIATELY after applying the glue, I painted over it with another coat of Simply White.

 

3) IMMEDIATELY  after applying the second coat over the glue areas I used my heat gun to dry the paint and glue.  To get the really textured bubbled look I placed the heat gun fairly close to the wet surface.  Be careful!  The gun is very hot.  This isn't like using a household hair dryer for the crackle look.

 

4) I repeated this process on each area I wanted to age and varied the amount of glue, amount of paint and closeness of the heat gun on each area.

 

And this is how it turned out.  See the beautiful old-looking crusty legs?

 

I love the combination of the drybrushing allowing the original wood to show through, the bleed-through and the crackly appearance from applying the glue.

 

I very lightly wet distressed along the edges of the chair frame where natural wear would occur.

 

 

Since the chair will be outside or on a porch, I lightly sprayed the chair frame with clear spray varnish.  This increased the aged look some as it made the bleed through areas look even more discolored and aged.

 

 

For the final touch, I filled a metal tub with Sunpatiens (impatiens grown to thrive in the sunshine). I also planted English Ivy in the back of the tub so it can grow up the chair frame as it grows.

 

 

 I'll share my secret for turning a new, shiny metal tub into one that looks old in my next post.  In the meantime, this porch planter chair will be for sale in my booth at Old South Antique Mall.

 

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