Starting the fall cleanup

Summer was officially over for me when I tossed my cheap flip flops in the trash.  Every year I buy a pair of inexpensive flip flops to wear in the yard and when the summer is over I just toss them.  Sometimes I need to buy a second pair to get me through the summer if I am doing a lot of ladder work.  But this was a one flip flop summer.

These last two weeks have been busy with small jobs in preparation for the winter.  I have been busy spray painting our vintage wrought iron outdoor furniture.  It's amazing the transformation that only paint can achieve.

I use spray paint in black with a satin finish.  Matte finish just doesn't do it justice and semi or hi gloss is just too much shine.  I made the mistake years ago when I repainted my first wrought iron furniture.  The furniture was already black so I purchased hi gloss black in a spray can.  I was disappointed after it dried that it didn't look like the original finish.  The next piece I tried semi gloss and didn't see much of an improvement.  That led me to the satin sheen, which I was certain was going to be too DULL.

NOPE.  Satin was the correct sheen which meant I had to go back and repaint the previous two pieces. 

I always start with the piece upside down and when it is dry I flip it over and do the top.  This eliminates scuffing the newly painted topside if you had painted the top first. 

All of this furniture is from Woodard but from different lines of Woodard.  They all work together because they have common features like the mesh, lattice detail, or the oak leaves plus now they all have a common color and sheen.

The pieces that I have left to paint have rust or peeling paint to tend to first before I paint.  My daughter in law has vintage wrought iron furniture and every spring she gives the pieces a once over and spray paints any area that shows rust or peeling.  We both leave our furniture out all winter.  For a brief moment I  thought about painting my furniture white. But I leave the furniture out all winter so even a little discoloration from rust would easily show if painted white.  Rust tends to show up around the weld spots first so when I paint I always pay special attention to those areas.  I had thought about buying patio furniture covers to protect the furniture during the winter and during the summer they would keep the cushions dry.

While the paint was drying I would help R with some tree trimming out by the driveway gates.  We had several problems going on out there.  

1. The limbs were too low and obscuring the pillar lights and scraping delivery trucks. We were also worried that during windy weather that the branches could cause damage to the lights. The left side pillar area was finished in the photo below and we were working on the right side.

2. The abundance of low hanging limbs were creating too much shade and my Nearly Wild roses were nearly dead.  

3. We had black walnut limbs growing into the lilacs and a clump of choke cherry. The black walnut limbs were causing deformity of the leaves on the lilac bush and dead leaves on the choke cherry bush..  

Choke cherry have thorns and someone always ends up bleeding and swearing when we trim the choke cherry bushes.  The birds love them and the berries bring in the cedar wax wing birds.

Where ever the black walnut touched the lilac bush the leaves were smaller and curled.  The photo below shows the smaller leaves on the left side of the bush. 

 And finally.....a photo of two wild turkeys that strolled through the yard. 

Reuse Repurpose Recycle