Cantastic Crafts and Buckets of Awesome

The Man decided that this weekend was the weekend to clean out the garage. That's pretty much his domain, it's where the tools and chemicals and other boring (to me) whatnot hangs out. I was enlisted to help determine what  should be kept, what could be reused/repurposed, and what needed to be tossed.

In one corner of the garage are built-in shelves which until this weekend housed every can of paint ever used in this house by every owner ever. Maybe. The oldest date we actually saw was 1992, but still, there was an insane amount of paint. I saw all those cans & couldn't stomach throwing them out. This is where my mind went:

from FunInTheMaking

I'm probably going to make a few of these with stars & suns for our patio. They'll be cute for BBQ decorations.

And look at all these ideas from the ReUse District!

So I spent a good part of yesterday pouring paint from 1 gallon cans into a big 5 gallon bucket that only had a couple of inches of paint in it. All those remnants filled the bucket, and we still had 12-15 cans left. So. Much. Waste!

I got a little giddy from the paint fumes and stirred the bucket while I poured, having fun seeing the color combos. I wish I had pictures, but I rarely think of things as bloggertunities until after the fact. 

I didn't want to hazmat 5 gallons of paint if we didn't have to, so I posted an ad to the "free stuff" section of craigslist. It read: 

After living in our home for nearly a year, we decided it was time for an archeological exploration of the storage space in the garage. We unearthed every insane color the previous owners had painted this house and decided to combine them all into one five gallon bucket of paint. Dozens of remnants combined into a new creation.

What color is the paint in this five gallon bucket of pure awesome? A new, unheard of, never before named hue. YOU get to name the shade! No more being constrained by the wannabe greeting card writers who name the paints at Home Depot! To whet your appetite: imagine you had a chocolate milkshake and a strawberry milkshake. Then imagine you poured them into a bowl, stirred them, and let them sit for a week or so. Voila!

Come and get it, free to the first taker. It's heavy (the bucket is filled nearly to the brim). Paint your horse, the undersides of your tables, the inside of your vomitorium (just to set the mood).

I thought it was funny. Within the hour we had someone come by, look at the 5+ gallons of pinkish-brownish slop, and take it to paint a room in their house. We had another couple come by a few minutes later & they were disappointed it was gone. So weird. 

Moral: Throw nothing away. Someone out there will want it and use it. Freecycle or Craigslist everything. And a little wacky humor helps.