Spray Painting: Lanterns

We got these lanterns (from Pier 1?) as a house warming present when we bought our house  in 2009. I believe it was last summer when I finally put up some hooks by our deck for them to hang on and be used. In the one summer (possibly two) that they sat outside full time, they lost their color. I recently decided it would be a great idea to give our back deck a color update. Along with fixing up the lanterns, I decided I wanted to change out a flower pot (maybe add more) and sew some new covers for the 'decorative' pillows that came with our outside couch (hopefully the next project to be started).

So, here is the marvelous before and after shots...
(I neglected to take a photo before I took out the glass and cleaned it up, it was much worse...)

And the process:

The first thing I did was clean them up. They were extremely dirty from sitting outside.

You can see in the photo below the difference in the top and the inside, bottom area. Lots of fading.

I usually just use a flat piece of cardboard out on the ground in the middle of our yard for spray painting, but inevitably spray the grass and figured I would do it this way and help contain everything. Plus I happened to have a decent sized box. The photo below might actually be a better show of the fading that occurred.

The downside to the box is that you have to pause frequently to let the cloud of off spray and fumes leave the box... otherwise you end up with a face full of it.

Then I primed. I just used a gray, although I would have preferred to use a black because of the end color, but we had just made a quick trip to where ever (Lowe's, I think) and that's what they had....

After I made sure that I hit everything somewhat well (there is a hint of color showing through still in a few spots) I switched to the actual color. This took a few days because of waiting for paint to dry (fun!), rotating and flipping things to hit all the spots, and an abnormal amount of wind and rain during the entire time.

After moving them around and hitting them about a million times each with the spray paint, they were finally covered well enough. I did actually drop one of the bottom candle holder parts on to one of the lanterns at one point and both chipped. I'm hoping it was because they were both still slightly damp and not dried all of the way. 

I'm hoping this will hold up well and look fantastic at least through this summer. I guess we'll see, but I'm sure I will want to switch colors again before that happens. For now, they look a million times better and will match those new pillow coverings. Maybe I'll get some evening candle shots once they're in use...