A Quick, Colorful Patio Makeover Just in Time for Summer

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We are in the season of outdoor lounging. Here in the upper Midwest, summer is at a premium and we live outside as much as possible. There’s no better way to indulge in this time of year than to sit on the patio and soak it all in.

My parents have a stunning backyard with gorgeous gardens, fruit trees, and fountains. They live outside in the summertime and spend hours on their patio. Though their backyard is spacious and lovely, there’s nothing special about the patio itself. They have a set of Adirondack chairs that were in need of a refresh. These chairs remain outside in the spring, summer, and fall and were in bad shape. Their paint was peeling and wearing off of the armrests.

In order to refresh them, we needed to remove most of the paint from the chairs in order to give them a clean base from which to work. The task of removing paint is generally a real pain. This is especially true with Adirondack chairs because they have so many angles and nooks and crannies. We immediately knew that sanding the chairs would take forever and be a messy job.

Instead, we used a Wagner Furno 750 heat gun to strip the chairs, and it was a game changer. The gun blasts high heat in a targeted stream and blisters the paint. Once the paint bubbles, you simply scrape it off with a straight edge. We’ve stripped furniture with chemicals and with sandpaper before, and this method was by far the best. It was easier, faster, and created way less mess.

Once most of the paint was peeled from the chairs, we gave them a light sanding to prep them to take the paint. Hand painting the chairs would have taken us days to finish, and the chairs would have showed all the brush marks.

So we decided to turn to our trusty Wagner FLEXiO 3000 paint sprayer.  The FLEXiO 3000 can spray un-thinned latex or oil-based paints, primers and stains and gives a light-textured, roller-like finish. It’s perfect for jobs like this, where rolling is simply not an option, and brushing would take forever. But we’ve used a Wagner paint sprayer indoors as well, and were pleasantly surprised by how great they were for doing an interior wall.

This is the third Wagner paint sprayer I’ve used on DIY projects, and it’s definitely my favorite design yet. The updated FLEXiO provides more even coverage with less overspray, and the new, numbered paint flow dial is really handy. Best of all, they reduced the number of parts in the nozzle, which makes it a lot easier to clean.

We wanted our chairs to have a satin, smooth finish, so we sprayed them using  Sherwin-Williams Tempe Star SW 6229.

The painting process was a breeze. We were able to paint six chairs in about three hours. We did two coats, plus touch-ups, allowing for some drying time in between coats. The paint process was quick and easy, and the finish was smooth.

And! Since we had another Wagner iSpray head lying around, it was really easy to pop in another color, and whip up another quick DIY project for this makeover: a stenciled outdoor rug.

We grabbed an old jute rug that had seen better days, and taped out a simple border on it. Then, we used the FLEXiO 3000 to spray a bold, black border on the rug, giving it a super quick refresh:

The After!

First, a reminder of what the patio looked like before:

Now, here’s a look at how the chairs turned out:

Want to see a few other outdoor projects?

• Product Comparison: Which is the Best Deck Stripper?
• Practical Gardening: How Irish Spring Soap Keeps Pests at Bay
• 59 DIY Landscaping Ideas and Tips to Improve Your Outdoor Space

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This post is sponsored by Wagner, but all opinions are mine alone. Thanks for supporting the great companies that make all the content on Curbly possible.