Nickel and Dime-ing.

Ok, you little buckets. Let me tell you how we just saved ourselves $680.

Granted, in the grand scheme of things, this stuff is fairly frivolous as it doesn't involve our livelihood...so even if there was no way to save ourselves that money, we wouldn't have spent it anyway. (At least not in this decade.)

Moving on. I have a personal distaste for brass and i care not that it's "coming back." This is also how i feel about clogs. All of our fixtures around the house are brass, including the outside. This past weekend, we decided to put a stop to that madness. And by madness, i mean we had around 3,000 (small exaggeration) light fixtures to replace around the outside of the house. Here's a pic of our garage with its two front lights:

Look closer:

Enter Rust-oleum's Satin Nickel spray paint:

Why we went with satin nickel instead of antique bronze like i wanted: because marriage is about compromise/ burying your resentment deep down inside. But seriously - compromise.

We detached all the fixtures, disassembled them, cleaned out the bug carcasses -and some living spiders, much to Chris' dismay...

...and hung them for painting:

After what seemed like 57 coats (but was probably around 3 because Chris is thorough), they were left to hang and dry. They were then hung, and some touch-up paint was needed with a sponge brush.

GOOD. AS. NEW.

And with the number of outdoor light fixtures this place has, we'd have spent $700 on brand new ones. So, by using $20 worth of spray paint and spending a little time and patience, we saved $680 and got rid of our outdoor brass. I might just be wanting a bagel with my coffee.

Lets do some Before & After pics:

 

EXTREME CLOSE-UP:

 Much better, am i right?