This photo was actually taken two summers ago after an amazing garage sale score! I had stumbled upon this sale along a main road on my way home from getting groceries. It was already late afternoon, so they were beginning to clean-up, but I spotted the wrought iron plant holders and thought it was worth pulling over. You know what they say, timing is everything! By this point, they really just wanted the stuff gone…I got the entire table full of stuff, plus the two plant stands for $20. Unbelievable! Anyway, it took me some time to get to it, but I finally have this ugly old rusty metal tray in usable condition. When you calculate the cost for this, I’m guessing it was almost free as it was probably one of the least valuable items in this spree.

I gave the tray a bit of a sanding to remove the rusty spots and then simply spray painted it white. I did plan to distress it slightly, but didn’t actually realize that the floral decoration had a bit more dimension to it than I originally accounted for. When I finished painting it, you could kind of see the floral design showing through. I really had no choice but to sand over the design and see what I could do with it. So, although I had planned to hide the flowers with paint….I ended up highlighting them by sanding, and surprising love this finished look! I can’t actually believe the ugly flowers are what make this tray so amazing….this is now my favourite serving tray!!

The moral of this story….when garage selling and thrifting, always look for well made items made of wood, metal and glass. It is amazing what you can do with paint and sand paper! This upcycle even surprised me!