Painting RUSTY Metal

My parents recently separated and moved to Alabama leaving their house in Nevada pretty full of furniture. Since the split was a difficult thing and they didn’t have a lot of discussions about what to do with the stuff in the house, my moms beloved Milk Jugs got left behind. A few weeks later we ended up moving from Alabama to Las Vegas and I went by the house to see if the Milk jugs were still there, thankfully they were!! Hallelujah!! I was so excited to get both of them that as soon as I got them home I was on Pinterest trying to find ideas for what to do with them. One of them ended up outside and I have big plans for it, and the other one came inside to be used next to a chair in the library/office. It has sat next to the chair for MONTHS because I have had no clue how to fulfill my vision for it without requiring a ton of time stripping down the rust. The piece had sat outside at my moms house, so it was pretty rusty and gross. So gross it literally sat in my house with bird poop on it (shhh don’t tell anyone that nasty secret).

A few months after I got it I discovered the amazing products that BB Frosch carried. BB Frosch is a company that has developed a wonderful powder that you add to ANY BRAND, ANY COLOR Flat Latex paint to create chalk paint. I love the whole idea of chalk paint… no prep work!! Glorious!! But I don’t like the idea of spending a fortune on boutique brand chalk paints, especially when I wanted this piece to look like the color was fading on it when I painted it, and that required several different “similar” colors. If I was to go buy the 3 colors of paint I used on this (which I really couldn’t because most boutique brands don’t carry them) it would have cost me a FORTUNE (I’m talking AT LEAST $50) for this little piece and I would have been left with a ton of left over paint, that MAYBE I would use on something else. Who am I kidding? I would have had to use it on something else because I spent a fortune on it so I couldn’t let it go to waste. The 3 colors I mixed up for this cost me less than $15 in paint and powder and that’s only because I mixed up 3 sample sizes, I didn’t even have to mix that much up because I only used about 2 tablespoons of color a piece so in reality I spent about $2 on what I used. That’s one of the great things about this product is that you only have to mix up how much you are going to use. I am super excited to also now be a BB Frosch Master, which means I can teach workshops and sell the wonderful product. I also now have a shop attached to my blog, the link is in the header!!

I took the nasty milk jug and gave it a good wipe down, I didn’t even clean the bird poop all the way off. I wanted to see how well the paint would work with something so gross and rusty. I wanted to know if it could rule tackle the job of painting rusty metal. I love that I can totally experiment with the paint to give y’all reviews and ideas, and because it’s so cheap, I don’t care if I mess up because it wont cost me much to fix and I can give y’all pointers on what to do. I’m totally the kind of person that likes to read up on everything and let someone else make the mistakes so I can learn from them before I make the mistake, but not anymore!! Now I can officially say that I LOVE experimenting with BB Frosch because you pretty much can’t mess up with it, or go wrong. In everything that I have done so far I have been blown away at the amazing abilities this product has.

First I took a mint color and painted it all over the milk jug. I used hashtag strokes but I was not overly concerned with coverage because I was going to be painting another layer over this one in a different color. I literally painted right over the rust and the poop and all the other nasty things on there.

I love the words on the jug, but when it was all rusty you could hardly see them.

Next I took a coat of tan and painted it over the mint using hashtag strokes and doing a much lighter, wide-spread coat.

I got the coverage I wanted with those two colors but I wanted to add more depth to the piece so I painted on a white coat in select places using a lime wash technique. After I did that I applied a bit more of the white using a very dry brush and wet rag. I wiped the paint away as I was painting with it to give it a weathered look. I wanted the piece to seem as though it had sat out in the elements and the color was fading or coming off in places. I did not want the rust look but I definitely wanted the aged look.

After I was done with that layering technique and I had the look I wanted, I moved on to sanding. The important part of the last technique was not to get it looking perfect but to get the general idea of a weathered look. The next few steps are what will send it over the top in terms of achieving the weathered/aged look you want.

I took a sand block and sanded down the edges and the words to make them pop. You can see the different tones of paint on the jug and how they obviously look painted on and not yet aged… I still had a few more steps to go to achieve the look I wanted, but first I needed to really sand it. After I sanded down the words and edges with a sanding block, I got out my electric sander and sanded places around the milk jug to give it a more aged, “beat up” look.

Because of the rust underneath, more of the dark rust color came through in the sanding, but that was not the look I was going for, so I needed to tone it down and “even” out my paint colors.

This is the final step that helps your piece achieve the weathered look we are going for. I got a damp rag and dabbed it in the paint and then ran it over the piece, in just in the sanded down places, with some of the 2nd color of paint, the tan color! I rubbed it over the sanded areas, and the areas I wanted to even out and then wiped it off with the damp side of my rag that had no paint on it. I did this over and over again in different areas until I felt that I had the weathered look I was going for. I really wanted it to look sun faded in areas and not like I had intentionally painted separate colors. This step is the step that made that look come to life.

No more obviously painted parts but areas where it looked like the paint was fading or coming off, that was exactly the look I was going for.

When I was done I waxed it and then took it back inside to sit in its spot in all its beautiful glory. (if you look closely at my chair you will see the lovely artwork that my two youngest children have provided me with on the chair. So sweet of them right?)

I absolutely love how it turned out. I love the pops of the mint color but I also love that it’s not overpowering and looks like its supposed to be that way.

I seriously am blown away at how amazing this Chalk Paint powder is, every time I use it. I would never in a million years have thought that I could achieve the look I wanted without having to really work at getting all that rust off. I’m so glad that I did not have to go through all the insane amount of work it would have taken to strip that jug down to its original state…. this finished product is exactly what I wanted and it cost me only a few dollars and about 30 minutes of my time. Win, win!!

I get loads of compliments on her now that she stands out and looks so pretty!!

I love that you can see some of the metal and a bit of the rust, but that none of that is overpowering or takes away from the general look and feel of the piece. Such magic!!