It’s A Spray Paint Party!

When my wife and I went to Portland, Oregon, we wanted to bring home something unusual, something to really capture the weirdness and coolness of the city.  We landed on a gumball machine.  It wasn’t old or original or anything, but it was interesting.  The actual base of the gumball machines are made of plastic, the gumball tanks are clear plastic and they sit on a wooden platform supported by a balustrade. 

Perfect.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a before photo, but here is the gist of it: 

There are two plastic bases – one was black, the other green.  The balustrade post was purple and chipped.  All of the internal mechanical parts were ripped out and just sitting in the clear plastic gumball tanks.

Here is a photo of the gumball machine during prepping for restoration:

The base of the gumball machine.

The tanks and bases have been removed, so all that is showing here is the purple balustrade and tank base plates before sanding (which was done by my wife, Allie).

After Allie sanded the support base, I went to work on painting and putting it all back together.  For the restoration of this and the next project discussed in this post, I used spray paint only, as did Allie on her projects, which you can read about here. 

The colors that I used are Rustoleum’s Regal Red and Canvas White for both jobs.

Regal Red.

Canvas White.

I painted the purple base white and the green and black gumball bases red.  I left the hardware the original metallic color (we had considered painting them silver, but decided we liked the original brass instead).

The finished project.

I used Devcon’s High Strength 5 Minute Epoxy Gel to put all the major components back together.

The epoxy - this stuff is awesome!

Most of the internal components were set aside (possibly for a future art project) simply because this gumball machine is no longer operational.  As a matter of fact, Allie and I were thinking about filling the tanks with marbles or dice (we would be open to other suggestions – feel free to leave them in the comments section).  I did however fix the exterior hardware – the trap door and turnkeys.  Sadly, one turnkey is missing, so I am on the hunt to find a replacement.

The missing turnkey is on the left - anyone know where I can get one?

After that project was completed, I turned my attention to two filing cabinets that I bought at Goodwill.  Originally, my thought was to replace my old, mismatched filing cabinets for a tall 4 or 5 drawer unit.  After unsuccessfully looking for a tall cabinet for a reasonable price, I decided to get two almost identical cabinets – they were both the same height, but one was wider then the other.  I figured they would look okay stacked up, which is how they were at the Goodwill store.

Of course, I don’t have a before photo, but I do have a pre-prep image:

The grey outer shell of the cabinet.

Just imagine another 2 drawer set in metallic grey, and that’s what they looked like.  I decided that I wanted to add some pop to these cabinets, so I painted them. I used the same white and red spray paint combo from the gum ball machine.  Those colors actually went very well with the wall colors in my office, which consists of Venetian Stucco (an off white) and Red Delicious (a deep red).

As I mentioned before, I was going to stack them, but after doing so, they just seemed too big and bulky and awkwardly placed in the corner.  So Allie suggested that I make the cabinets the supports for my desk.  Originally, I was a little hesitant – my desk was supported by two industrial sawhorses; what I thought was a unique solution (also thought of by my wife).   

The desk with sawhorse support.  Note the old, mismatched filing cabinets in the corner.

I would like to take a moment to point out the paper shades in the windows - those are no longer hanging in my office.  Allie, my wonderful and talented wife, made me, that's right, made me, my own custom Roman shades.  You can read about that project here.

However, the case to change out the horses for the cabinets was a strong one – I could have more readily accessible file storage and stronger (wider) supports for the desk.  I was also able to better hide all of the seemingly hundreds of cables and plugs out of view and de-clutter the corner of my office.  So, after much wrangling, Allie and I were able to swap out the sawhorses for the file cabinets, and they look great:

The larger (wider) filing cabinet.

The narrow cabinet.

Wide shot of completed cabinets and desktop.

View of cabinet color and wall color

Both projects took the course of a weekend to complete, and all in all, I am very happy with how they came out.  We got them finished just in time to beat out the Arizona heat. 

Thanks for reading!