How to Easily Refinish an Old Flower Pot

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Do you ever go through the garden section of Walmart or Lowe’s and fall in love with a plant, then have to buy it even if you don’t know how you’ll fit another single plant in your home?  I do!  In fact, I do it far too often.  That’s what happened when I came across a gorgeous agave plant at Walmart.  The plus side of this purchase was the plant could be outside, where there’s plenty of room, since it likes the sun and heat.  The down side was that I was about 90% positive I didn’t have a large enough flower pot to place it in and didn’t want to spend another $50 at the least on a new one.  Regardless, I bought the plant anyway.

After venturing home with my new agave plant, I searched around for a spot to place it where the temporary plastic pot could be somewhat hidden until I figured out something else to do.  To my unknown luck, I stumbled upon a large clay pot we had stowed away next to the old shed when we first moved into our house a couple years prior.  It was the perfect size!  It had a really pretty Aztec print with a glaze finish, but the colors and glaze were all chipping off at that point.  In my opinion, it wasn’t chipping off just enough to where it could be slid by as a rustic-western style pot, but bad enough that it looked like a bit of an eyesore.  However, I was going to use this pot one way or another.

Our garage has quite a bit of crafty supplies in it that I’ve gathered up from different projects over the years, so I took a look through what we had to see what I could manage in my flower pot revival.  There were several cans of white spray paint.  A person can never go wrong with that, right?  There were also several bottles of craft paint in varying colors.  I tend to gravitate toward neutral color most often, namely white, black and grey.  So of course, I grabbed the black and grey craft paint.

The Aztec pattern would be staying as part of the design, because it was actually molded on the flower pot rather than just painted on.  I started off by using a medium grit sanding sponge to take off the rough edges of the leftover glaze.  The glaze wasn’t fully coming off in parts where it wasn’t chipping yet, so I ended up just having to sand the edges until I could get them as smooth as possible.  It would be fully painted over anyway so no big deal!  After all the sanding was finished, I wiped down the entire surface with a microfiber towel to rid of any leftover dust and dirt.  This was done to make sure the paint would adhere to the pot.

Now it’s time for the fun part!  Since there was plenty of white spray paint at hand, I started off by covering the entire pot with white as the base color.  I almost considered leaving it plain white, but decided it looked too boring.  With the black craft paint and a small/medium sized craft paint brush, I started filling in the shapes of the pattern.  I don’t have the steadiest hand so it was somewhat difficult, but the pot would be outside and not closely inspected so no big worries with that!  Alternating the black and grey paint between every other shape was the original plan, but I got in the zone while painting and kind of forgot.  It worked out well though!  I actually ended up loving the end result with black and white alone.  It gave the flower pot a classic, clean look.  When the paint was fully dry, a spray acrylic coating was applied to protect the paint from the elements.  A protective coating will probably need to be reapplied every couple of years with the hot summer sun beating down on it.

The vibrant green agave spilling out the top of the flower pot added the most perfect finishing touch!  I’m pretty positive I wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfied with a brand spanking new flower pot.  Plus, it feels good to know I revived it myself with very little money.  Win!

If you’re looking for some adorable concrete planters that don’t need any work other than some pretty plants placed inside, you can find them in our store here.  The shallow planters are perfect for succulents!  Be sure to check out our other cute finds while you’re there!