What a great antique tool collection. If those tools could talk, they would tell us about hundreds of hours of dirt-work. Maybe they were there when the owners wore their backs out. lol. What a great way to display and honor what they represent. I would add a garden sign to the collection. "SWEAT HAPPENS". Or a quote from a gardening poet. "Sweat Doth Happeneth". There thats better. The blue bottle tree is so great and I'll bet looks wonderful as the continuation of the blue garden balls in the other tree. Your garden bench looks so inviting. The 'hopping steps' (log slices) make a very fun path to get to the seating area. Dont forget to paint loads of wood sealer on them every season. (I had some but mine were cut too thin and rotted down quickly) The headboard has a forboding look that says, it dares any of the woods to encroch any further. "May not grow beyound this fence". lol. It all works well and you needed that pop of white to prevent the shadows of the woods from swallowing up the designs of the bench and headboard. Thank you and Carol for providing a rose garden for your princess!!!!! Roses are gifts of love. I did not know that mini roses could live through the winter and come back! Let me know their proper name (it's probably Latin). I'm all excited about learning that. Great pictures!

We are doing this job in a very small town & everyone there said it could not be mixed or purchased. I will call BM to find out more about that Ironclad product today. www.myperfectcolor.com could be a solution for you. I use them a lot for clients in remote locations that either do not have a BenM store close by or their BenM store is small with limited product. The smaller BenM stores will have a decent stock of paints for interior but it's the exterior, like MoorGard in quarts, etc. that they don't always have handy and it takes 'em too long to order it in. And then there's Aura; not every BenM store offers Aura. Myperfectcolor almost always ships the same day. Orders over $50 are free shipping and their prices per gallon are reasonable.

I painted a near totally rusty shed ten years ago.. it gets sprinkler misting at least weekly right now. It had been misted twice weekly by the sprinklers until they made sprinkling restrictions tighter at once per week about a year ago. It has only a couple spots of rust peeking through now. Brushed on two coats of Ospho, which is about the consistancy of water. Basicly a weak phosphoric acid with some lanolin in it. It converts the rust to sort of a phosphate primer. Lanolin is one of the worlds best rust preventitives. Then I brushed on two coats of Rustoliem cream colored paint. Added some blue paint for trim detail... done.

I think unless you tape off everything in sight you'll end up with paint on your house! I'm teasing but serious. I use Rustoleum spray all the time. Usually out back near the field behind our house, with cardboard underneath. Forget what I used as a drop cloth once, but it really showed the 'drift', and it went pretty far away from my work area. (And no doubt the reason my late dad sent me out to the back forty when I was a teen and he saw me with a spray can in hand. ;D ) Some of those hammered colors come in quarts, I'm pretty sure. (I'd link to it but Rustoleum's site is down for me.) Depends on color your going for. Shop around, it's my experience that what one store carries another doesn't with that product line. So if you don't see it, doesn't necessarily mean it's not available. (Web site would be the place to check.) Were it me I'd prime that plastic trim with a good clingy primer first for sure. I like Zinsser Bullseye latex but there are other good ones out there. As far as appearance, I'm thinking you might be in for a let down. I dunno. Depends on what you're envisioning. I've used several of the metallics in sprays. Deeper colors looks better (bronze). Just recently did an iron bench that I wanted to have an aged copper patina. Copper I had was way to bright and shiny for the project! I ended up spraying a 'blend' of antique gold and aged bronze.