Outdoor light upgrade

Every since we've moved in to this house (about 3.5 years ago) I have hated our outdoor lights. They are brassy gold, rusty, and hideous. But we had bigger jobs to tackle and our backyard always looked like a mess anyway so I never paid much attention to them...other than complaining periodically! :)

But I saw a blog post over on Suburban Spunk and it inspired me to paint my existing outdoor light fixtures. Much cheaper and a little more eye pleasing. I recently repainted our metal bistro set with spray paint and it was a miracle, so I figured using that for the lights would be a good idea. The only problem was that I had to wait for Loren to help me with removing the lights from the house since there were wires involved. Here's what the lights looked like...brassy and gross.




Anyway - Loren got the lights down for me on Friday afternoon. The first thing that needs to be done to remove the lights from the house is to make sure you've shut off the power. Then he just unscrewed the lights and loosened the wires. He put the wire caps back on and then covered the holes with grocery bags to prevent water/critters from getting into the exposed wall.



Saturday after our run (and nap) I decided to get busy. I cleaned up the lights and then started taping up the glass portions. This was the most tideous and horrible part. I'm awful at taping and also have ZERO patience so I feel like this was a true testiment to how badly I hated these gold light fixtures. I got them all taped up and then realized that I needed to remove the bottom piece of the light anyways to avoid spraying paint up inside the lamp - not cool. It was finally time to paint! I used Rustoleum spray paint in Black Satin. It works well on any surface and even covers rust! It took about three coats of paint to get the lights totally covered. I really think that one coat would work if you could see all the angles properly but I kept missing spots since I didn't want to touch the lights while they were wet...because this paint does not come off your fingers very easy.




We then waited overnight for the paint to fully dry and reinstalled those beauties!






They're definitely not perfect but I think they're mucho improved. I decided to leave the long weird piece on our larger lamp off - I really didn't like it and think just removing that dagger looking part is an improvement. I'm happy with the project overall and a happy wife = happy life...right Loren?! And...I really couldn't have finished this project if it weren't for Loren's help. What do you think? Improvement or not so much? Or have you done any recent lamp makeovers?