Gettin' Rail

This past Saturday dawned sunny and beautiful, with temperatures in the 80's and only 5 mph wind.

Hallelujah! It was perrrfect weather for painting!

First we filled a bucket with water and a drop of dish soap and grabbed an old towel and washed off the rail.

Then Tom fixed and secured our wobbly spiral decorative things.

And since we're not the most careful painters ever, we taped around the posts and under the rail to help prevent paint from getting on the cement.

Then we busted out the paint brushes and heavy-duty Rustoleum Heavy Rust Primer and gave the lovely rail a beautiful coat of primer. This stuff is oil-based and hardcore, folks. It's for seriously rusted metal, which I suppose our wrought iron rail wasn't really heavily rusted, but we got it because it's supposed to halt rust in his tracks - and I just can't argue with that!

So we slathered it on. Yep, that stuff is pretty goopy (but isn't all oil-based primer?) and stinks to high-heaven (no worries, Ms. Preggo wore a gas mask again!), but it should provide a very solid barrier to rust while helping the paint stick even better. Can't argue with that! And I love that it was already tinted "Rust Brown" (which is actually more a Red-Brown color), because it really helped us picture what the rail would look like after the final coat.

What do you think? It's looking better already with just a coat of primer, isn't it? Stay tuned for tomorrow's final reveal, where we'll also dish about exactly how long it took and the total cost!

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