Our house came with an old fashioned horse hitching post at the point of our circle (ok, maybe more like tear-drop shaped) driveway.  One of the previous owners was into horses and welding … hence the hitching post.

the horse hitching post ... hiding behind the bush

We never paid a whole lot of attention to the horse … mostly because it was hidden behind a bush and surrounded by other plants when we moved in.  When we put new landscaping in this spring, though, we asked the landscaper to include the area around the horse in his design.  With the new landscaping, the horse is much more of a focal point than it was before, which we like.

the horse with the shiny new landscaping

We’ve been noticing, though, that it’s a little rusted and not looking the finest … and now that it’s more of a focal point, we thought it would be a good time to fix that.  I’ve been waiting for the weather to cool down to an acceptable temperature before tackling the re-painting of the horse and decided that this morning would be good enough.  It was below 90 degrees, not raining, and below the humidity threshold for the spray paint … so I figured there was no point in continuing to wait for the perfect day.

wire brushing the horse

I started by taking a wire brush to the horse to knock off any loose paint or rust.  By the time it was done, I was covered in a fine layer of black dust, but the horse didn’t look too different.  I was kind of surprised by that, but I think the brush did it’s job since the painted surface is a lot smoother than I think it otherwise would have been.

all ready for paint!

the spray paint

After wire brushing the horse, I rinsed it off with a garden hose and then got a bucket of dish soap and water to remove any remaining residue before rinsing it again and leaving it sit in the sun to dry.  With the horse dry, I then applied a couple of light coats of Rust-olium Rust Reformer primer followed by a couple of light coats of flat black spray paint (as a top coat).

as good as new

I’m giving the horse a good 24 hours to make sure it’s completely dry before replacing the mulch at the base, but otherwise, this quick project is pretty much done.  For as quick, cheap, and easy as this fix was, I’m super excited about how it turned out.

 

Filed Under: Landscaping,Painting

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2 thoughts on “A Horse is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course

  1. Jan says:

    In the racing biz we call that a Krylon rebuild.

    Looks great.

  2. CarLyle says:

    Nice Work! That horse looks kind of mean. You should paint the eyes red and come up with some good stories to tell the kids about it around Halloween :-)

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