Hey Kate!!!! Lucky find!!!!!!!!!!! I love mosaics too. some of the girls on the Mosaic Forum (Here at Garden Web on the Home Forums there is Stained Glass and Mosaic Forum. They have some neat rocking horse (carrousel) mosaics. They will be able to give you specifics on adheasive and grout. Some of the girls on this Forum do mosaic work too but you might get your answer very quickly by doing a 'search' over there.

Thanks for all the great comments! Im going to try to answer all questions! Aquawise, I hand sanded the whole thing and then spray painted it with rustoleum. For the saddle and harness colors I also used rustoleum, not the spray kind tho! Then I sprayed the whole thing (about 3 coats) with a outdoor sealer/ poly. For the plugs, I pulled out the wood foot rests and cut them about 3 inches long and reinserted them with some jb weld on them. they were tight to begin with but I thought that would help too. Careful not to push them all the way through!! Sandplum, I actually used a wood bit and just went really slow. Drilled a pilot hole first. Jeanne, I have not started on the other one yet as I went back to work for the winter (until April). (just retired in Aug).. They made me a offer I couldnt refuse!!!! My brother is on the lookout for a geared down motor we can use for the solar carousel. I do have the new horse off the stand and ready to be sprayed. Thanks again.. Kathy O (lots of Kathys on here it seems!)

Ruth, if you no longer have the wood dowels that came with the horse, go to the hardware store and pick up some that will fit in that hole. Cut them about 1/4" short on each side. Glue them with carpenter's glue. Once that is dry, fill in with wood putty, sand smooth, then proceed to paint. I crackled one of the horses but you can start painting right on the horse (you may want to spray a primer on it first). I used acrylic paints - straight color book type painting with the exception of the roses which I painted myself (you can find beautiful decals if you don't paint). Once you have completed the painting (this may take several coats), use a good spray varnish or polyurethane to seal the paints. That's about it. If you have any further questions, please ask. B

Yeah, that's the plan. I haven't figured out exactly how to do that yet, but I have a Dremel and I know how to use it! Seriously, the pedestal will be important because we get such tremendous daily storms here in Orlando so I need to be sure it's very stable. After looking at some of your posts and photos, Slow, I'm thinking I may want to use some concrete blocks and build a wire frame around them to look like a post. Then I could add a narrower post out the top of the saddle and really make this guy look like a carousel horse! The top of the post could be a great place to hang an orchid or two, right? This is a pitiful sketch but it shows what I'm thinking about doing. If a couple of the hooves are at ground level that will make it even more stable. I can even use some metallic tiles on the support post and do a spiral stripe on the top post! Ooooo! The possibilities are endless!!! Now I just need to figure out where to get all these tiles but that's the subject of another post. Kate