Guest Post-Spray Painting Shutters

Last month Wagner supplied me with two Power Painter Plus paint sprayers to give away. Karen was one of the lucky winners.  In order to win, the entrant had to agree to do before/after pictures here on the blog.  Here is Karen’s account of how she and her husband transformed some shutters with her Wagner Power Painter Plus!

A big painting job loomed for my husband and me.  We purchased a little lakeside vacation house that needed, among other things, some shutters.  Whatever shutters had previously been attached to the house had been stolen, along with the heat pump, gutters, all interior fixtures and several large chunks of the backyard deck. Now before anyone freaks out, we bought the house in gutted condition. Two years later we’ve made the place livable with facelifts and refurbished finds. Everything has been done except those darn shutters!

Since hubby and I are thrifty, we purchased most of the shutters from Craigslist sellers.  A few we found (and I kid you not) still at the house but hidden beneath a giant clump of pampas grass. The recycled shutters came in a rainbow of faded colors. What I wanted was Hunter Green. Enter My Repurposed Life and the Wagner Power Painter Plus Giveaway to make our lives–and getting to Hunter Green–much easier.

Here is a picture of some of the shutters prior to painting. The hunk in the picture is my hubby.  The shed in the back is our NEXT project. (But please don’t tell him!)

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Before painting, we primed all the shutters.  We discovered the need to prime plastic shutters the hard way.  If you don’t prime, the paint bubbles up and peels off in large swatches. It was a sizable mistake which amounted to a ton of extra work and an encyclopedic amount of expletives and unmentionable choice phrases. We chose to hand-roll the primer:

Primer applied, nothing to do but spray and hang, right?  Not exactly.  We carefully read the instructions, assembled the sprayer and, as directed,  added the lubricating oil Wagner provided.  My hubby then took the sprayer on a test run over some leftover cardboard:

Nothing to do now but paint:

Zip!  Zap! Ka-pow! With a few quick flicks of the wrist, my husband knocked out all ten shutters. So take that, Mom! Here’s visual proof of why I didn’t need to marry a Rockefeller!

The Wagner Power Painter did a nice job, but you must follow the provided instructions.  Some things we learned through trial and error.

1. You do need to thin the paint before putting it into the sprayer
2. You need to keep the painter straight and at a set distance from the surface you’re painting.

Thanks to Wagner and Gail for making our work much easier!

Thank you Karen for showing us your beautiful Hunter Green shutters!  I think they look fabulous!   Check out Karen’s blog:

gail