I Love you, Spray Paint!

What in the world would I do without spray paint?  I would either be spending a lot more money, or be living with nasty ugly brass, and yellowy old looking wood blinds!

I really wanted to do something about these ugly blinds in our front living area.  I do like blinds for privacy sake, and they are actually in really good condition, and are good quality thick heavy blinds - just an ugly color.  So instead of shelling out $80+ for new blinds, I thought we would give spray painting them a try.  I googled and googled and looked all over my favorite design blogs and couldn't find anyone who had ever spray painted their blinds.  I was concerned that this really wouldn't work out well, but if I figured even if I mess up, I'll have to get new blinds anyway!  So it was worth a shot.

Luckily we have a swing set in the backyard, so we took the blinds off the window and took the swings off of the swingset and hung them there:

Hi Jarrod's feet!

Then commence spray painting:

I chose an espresso satin finish rustoleum paint.  It really worked out well!  I can tell they are spray painted, but whenever I tell people who come over they can't believe it. 

A reminder of the horrible before:

And the refreshing after:

Here are some other quick fixes you can do with spray paint:

Ugly brass door knobs:

Into sleek brushed nickel door knobs

Again, brass knobs:

Brushed Nickel knobs:

Nasty outdated brass cabinet hardware:

Into contemporary brushed nickel harware that pops off the new chocolate finish:

Now I need to tackle some ugly brass light fixtures until we can replace them.  I'm not suggesting that these are great permanent solutions, but we just didn't have the budget to replace things like hardware, blinds and light fixtures and I certainly wasn't going to live with them the way they were!  And since I don't notice how ugly they are anymore, replacing them will come WAY after we finish other major projects.

What have you spray painted?  How did it turn out?  What is your favorite spray paint?