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Delightful Dwelling

I had to participate in A Soft Place to Land’s DIY day. Check out my DIY project and then head on over to ASPTL and join in on the fun.

 DIY Day @ ASPTL

 

When I posted about our outside house makeover here and here, I left out much info. on how I revamped our outside lights on each side of the garage. They were probably gold originally and then had been painted white somewhere along the way. So here’s what I started with.(And yes it’s a bad photo, sorry!)

home21

I decided when we painted the shutters and garage trim black that the lights needed a makeover too. So it was time to break out the spray paint again. However, hubby did not want to take the lights down and have to worry about getting them back on right and making sure they didn’t leak. Therefore, I decided to spray paint them the lazy way and leave the lights still mounted to the house while I painted them.  Here’s how I did it.

1. Remove top of light and glass inserts. This was pretty easy, just a few screws holding the top in place and hubby carefully lifted out the glass panels.

2. Remove lightbulb and tape of inside of light where the light goes. Spray paint and electricity don’t mix so well so keep paint out of there.

3. Use newspaper, plastic bags, whatever you have on hand to cover the side of the house around the light. Spray paint on light good, spray paint all over the house, bad. I used a thin plastic drop cloth on the first light, but I found newspaper worked much better. Use painters tape, masking tape, packing tape, again whatever you have on hand to tape the paper/plastic to the house around the light. Carefully tear paper and use tape to mark off around the base of the light. This can be tricky because of all the curves.

(Imagine picture of light surrounded by newspaper and tape here. I should have taken more photos of the process, sorry, I’m trying to be better about that!)

4. Stand carefully on ladder if lights are up high and get going with the spraying. I used black satin Rustoleum paint. Put top cover of light(that was removed) on cardboard or dropcloth and paint that also using light even coats.

5. After a couple coats of paint let everything dry and remove plastic and newspaper from house so neighbors will stop staring at you. Reinsert lightbulb and top of light. Stand back and admire your work.

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I know this won’t work for all types of lights and if you to remove the light that’s fine too. But if you have these blah builder grade lights, you can change the color and do it the lazy way like me.