The LANLEE Way: August 2016

Friday 12 August 2016

LANLEE Projects: How to make Planters from Galvanised Buckets

Lanlee Projects #1

How to make planters from galvanised buckets

For This DIY You Will Need

1x Bottle Methylated Spirit
1x Clean Rag/Cloth

1x Tin of Galvanised Metal Primer (I used Hammerites 'Special Metals' primer)

1x Roll of 24mm Masking Tape
2x 250ml Tins of Ronseal Garden Paints in Different Colours. (I used 'Summer Sky' and 'Sundial'

1x Wire Brush
1x Drill (or other tool suitable for putting holes into the bottom of the bucket)

Clean - To remove the 'grease' from galvanised metal and to create a smooth, clean surface for painting you should first wipe down the bucket with some methylated spirit and a clean rag or cloth. You can definitely 'feel' a difference in the bucket after you have cleaned it. I did also find that this to be a necessary process (even when using a new, clean bucket like mine) as the primer stuck better to the parts of the bucket that were cleaned more thoroughly. Brush - If you'd like the galvanised parts of your bucket to have a 'brushed steel' look then you can brush the bucket with a wire brush using horizontal or vertical motions to get this look

Prep - Because the primer had turned the bucket a red colour, before painting I wanted to make sure that you would still be able to see the natural galvanised surface in between the triangular blocks of colour that I was going to add. This meant that I then had to apply pieces of masking tape where I wanted the galvanised surface to show through, I traced the outline with a pencil and the removed . This meant that I could then apply more masking tape in pairs along the outside of these lines. I then used a wire brush (that I had bought for a future project) to brush off the primer and reveal the galvanised surface beneath and removed the tape. In retrospect I would definitely have applied the masking tape before priming as this step took quite a long time, and it was difficult to go over all the small areas with the wire brush to remove the primer. Then.... You will need to do a little bit of prep work. All you need to do is place a few strips of masking tape at slight angles from the top to the bottom of the bucket as shown below...and then add a few more at more horizontal angles along the bucket. To avoid the masking tape sticking too strongly to the bucket you could stick and unstick the tape to and from one of the paint tins. doing this about three times for every strip of masking tape will stop the tape adhering too strongly to the bucket and wont leave behind any hard-to-clean residue. Also, if there are any grooves in the bucket, make sure to press the masking tape down flat along these parts, doing so will make sure no paint seeps through to the galvanised parts when painting.

Paint - I then began to paint in the spaces left with my yellow and turquoise paint. I tried to plan this out so that no yellow would be next to another yellow shape and no turquoise would be next to another turquoise shape, and this worked out pretty well. Because the primer was such a strong colour I had to go over it with quite a few coats of the paint. The turquoise took 4 coats and the yellow took about 5-6 Coats. When I had applied enough coats of paint (and it all had dried of course) I removed the masking tape from the bucket. Around the places where the bucket was flat the paint showed up in crisp straight lines, however along the grooves It was not as neat. To get rid of this excess paint I went back over it with some turpentine and the same rag I had used to paint the bucket and was successful in managing to get almost all of it off.

Plant - Once I had finished with the painting part I began to start thinking about what I was going to do with it. I got a colleague to drill a few holes into the bottom of the bucket and then proceeded to add my soil and some plants that I had bought from the garden store which cost me just under £10.00 in total. If you have your own garden ( unlike me) you could even transfer a plant, or a few plants from your garden into the bucket instead. If you will be placing your plants outdoors in a place where it will be exposed to lots of sunlight it is recommended that you purchase some moisture crystals to keep the plant hydrated as the bucket will retain the heat.

Overview - Overall The bucket turned out really well and was quite cheap to make. I also had a lot of Ronseal Multi-purpose Garden Paint left over that I could use on future projects whether it be on wood, brick, stone, terracotta or galvanised metal. If I was to do this project again I would have definitely applied the masking tape in the shapes that I wanted before putting the primer on, This would have meant that I wouldn't have had to spend more time wire brushing the bucket to get back through to the galvanised surface beneath. I would have also tried to find a primer which was not such a strong colour so that I didn't have to apply as many coats of the paint to the bucket to cover up the strong red colour.

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