Spray Painting Lawn Furniture and relaxing with Palm Breeze!

Summer is here! And so is the heat...which is an awesome and really not awesome thing.

It's really awesome because in Western Washington most of the year is spent waiting for the glorious sun to come out. And then it becomes not so awesome when temperatures get above 75 degrees (my personal comfort level) and you don't have A/C in the house. But then it turns right back to awesome because my backyard is (cue falsetto voice) awesome!! Well, it's on it's way to being pretty awesome. My goal has been to create a comfortable entertaining space where adults can enjoy a meal and each other's company while keeping the kids in view.

To get a kick start on this dream-backyard-oasis I've been collecting lawn furniture and children's toys to make our backyard a place where we want to spend time in the afternoons and evenings.

A few months ago I was gifted a set of three quality plastic Adirondack chairs from my local Buy Nothing group. They were spray painted white a season or so ago and I decided that I'd like to try my hand at refreshing them a little bit.  I've seen tons of tutorials on how to spray paint plastic lawn furniture and figured it can't be to hard.

So I grabbed my materials:
2 cans of spray paint per chair (I chose purple, dark blue and light blue)
scrub brush
water
Soft Scrub cleaning solution
course sandpaper

This is a project that I did over the course of a week during nap times. It was perfect because most of the steps were short but required some wait time between them. 

First I cleaned the chairs as well as I could, using a hard bristled scrubber and Soft Scrub. This scrubbed some of the white paint off. I took a break and waited for it to dry.

Then I took some course sandpaper and tried to sand off (or at least scuff) the old spray paint layer. I didn't go through the trouble of sanding all of the spray paint off, but tried to thin it out at the very least. I washed it again and allowed it to dry.

When I was ready to paint I made my workspace in the gravel in our back driveway (away from everything) so that I wouldn't have to worry about overspray. Following the instructions on the can I started spraying a very light coat onto the chair, moving it around as I needed to. As the coats dried I added more layers to create a solid look. This was over the course of several days due to drying time between the layers. It took about one and a half spray paint cans per chair to get the coverage that I wanted. 

And then they were done! A celebratory drink upon my new chairs was in order.

Palm Breeze (in Ruby Red Citrus) has been my go-to drink this summer. It reminds me of a certain soda that is blood orange flavored, except that Palm Breeze is a flavored malt beverage (FMB). Which basically means it’s an alcoholic drink made with a malt base, kind of like beer. Can I just tell you about the serious yum factor of this stuff?! I've made sure that our fridge is stocked with a case of it at all times this summer. It's been the perfect drink to cool off in the backyard with. I was so pleasantly surprised because I was expecting an overly sugary drink like most other flavored malt beverages are. Nope! I enjoyed it just like my favorite blood orange soda (responsibly, of course). 

Keep an eye on the blog for more summer-time backyard oasis posts...I've still got a few more up my sleeve!

How do you relax in your backyard?

Disclosure: I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls 

and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.