The Restored Spring Horse!

One of my very first "restoration" projects came in the form of a sad neglected spring horse that I found at my local Thrift Store. I bought it for $35 plus tax, used all my strength to toss it in the back of my mother's SUV, and giggled the entire way home. You couldn't have paid me to stop smiling at that point. I almost didn't buy it because it didn't have a ground base and I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to figure out how to mount it in the ground, that it would sit gorgeous and useless in the back of my garage. My dad spied it and instantly had a plan, which is actually in action as I type this. The cement slab is drying in my yard right at this very moment, begging for a handsome spring horse to be bolted into it.  All in all I spent about $80 total, including the price I paid for the horse to begin with, to jazz it up.  I've heard you can find these at flea markets for a little cheaper then what I paid for mine. Hopefully I'll find another this year! Anyway, it took me about a week to do everything, mostly because I had to work. I put in maybe a solid 12 hours sanding, spray painting, driving to the hardware store, eating popsicles with my daughter, and cutting stars out of tape. My tip: wear a mask when you're sanding. It doesn't matter if you are up wind from it on a blustery day, it will still end up all over your face.
I'll go to pictures at this point.

 

There she is! Obviously you want to pick one that's structurally sound. I knew I'd probably have to replace the rusty bolts holding it all together but the rust on the actual spring area was just cosmetic. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty, turn it over, pick it up, look at the bolts and rusted areas closely. Bolts are a couple bucks at a hardware store and can almost always be replaced. But the actual structure would cost much more, if you can replace it. Another thing to note, I had noticed on my horse that someone had cut larger holes in the bottom of the spring, where it would meet a ground base, so I had to take that into consideration. Would there be a solution to that? Turns out we just used some washers and larger bolts.

 

So I removed it from it's base in order to sand down the actual horse which is plastic. I basically sanded it so that I would have a smooth surface to spray paint over. I wasn't trying to get every shred of paint off but enough to make it smooth. However, after I started it was a mad house! The original color was red and the eyes were yellow, but on top of that was blue spray paint, red flat paint, black, red, black, yellow, red. There were about 4 layers of paint on any given part. More on the black hooves and tail. Horrible. But after about 6 hours of sanding it was good to go. 

I primed it, not only would I see if it was raised up in places, but also so that my midnight blue would be as blue as it possibly could be.

I hadn't painted an eye at this point, but I had taped off the saddle blanket and the reins before I sprayed it blue. I wanted a crisp white base for the silver. And those areas are silver, it just looks white in the sun I guess. After it had all dried I taped around those areas and used a paintable silver on the reins, threw some stripes in the hair, and a spray silver on the saddle blanket. The lesson I learned this day was, don't use your favorite, perfectly sized, paint brush with metallic outdoor paint, because it won't wash off and will ruin your brush.  I ended up using squares of tape and just cutting stars out of them directly on the horse. Then spraying a gold spray paint on that. It was super liquidy and I ended up having to touch it up. So, if you spray a can of spray paint closely onto a paper plate (outside!) it'll stay wet and you can use a paint brush to go back over mistakes. It was a lovely discovery for me. I'm certain some spray paint veterans are slapping their foreheads right now.

 

 

An eyeball! Basically it's finished and almost ready to be mounted back on it's base. Which I used an electric sander for. It took my dad about 5 minutes to finish that. I'm majorly accident prone, so I generally stay away from electric tools that can rip my skin off. My dad was nice enough to let me use his sander, so I was nice enough to not risk getting blood on his garage floor, and just let him do it.  I spray painted the base black and the foot area silver. All that was missing was about 5 coats of outdoor clear gloss. Which I used on everything. (the horse, foot hold, and spring) Also, make sure you use all outdoor paint if your project will be outdoors. It just saves you peeling in the end.

My daughter's new beautiful spring horse! 

 

A nice side by side. Before and After.

 

My point here is that with a little time and a will to work on it, this was a pretty easy peasy restoration project. It took about 12 hours out of my life, not including digging the hole and pouring the concrete slab we decided to bolt it into, and it was a pretty minimal strength/endurance project. Cutting out stars requires very little, artistic wise, so even if you don't consider yourself "artsy" you can do this.

All I needed was sand paper, medium grain
A medium sized flat paint brush
Painters tape
A box cutter
and spray paint

I hope this inspires you to start a project today!

Enjoy!