You may recall that we have some ugly pipes in our downstairs laundry/family room. ↓

I think they used to belong to a water heater that formerly existed down there, but they’ve long since become defunct since our water heater is elsewhere in the house.

KC and I didn’t feel comfortable cutting the pipes and then sealing the wall, given that we’re renting, so we just let them hang out for a bit.  However, after we redid the basement space, we started thinking about how we could jazz up the pipes so they didn’t look so… “hey this used to be a basement,” y’know?

After I became infatuated with Rustoleum metallic gold spray paint while redoing the trunk for that space, we came up with the idea to paint the pipes gold.  We couldn’t really hide them effectively, so why not make them a little focal point instead?

This past weekend I rolled up my sleeves and blinged out those pipes like you wouldn’t believe.  It was crazy easy (spray painting is amazing) — the worst part was prepping the space to make sure I didn’t spray paint anything I wasn’t supposed to.  (As much as I love the idea of everything being metallic gold, I figured I should curb my Midas tendencies and keep the gold confined to the pipes).

I was feeling pretty good about things when I started in with the painters tape prep:

Looking pretty good right?  Well, things kind of got… less professional-looking as I started really covering the space…

Whatever.  I mean, it did the trick.  Who cares if I had to use a quarter of a roll of painters tape for this monstrosity?  (Ok, maybe a half a roll…)

I primed the pipes with some leftover Kilz Original Primer Sealer Spray:

Looking better already, right?  Also, doesn’t all the plastic make it look like some sort of weird murder-room?  No?  Just me?  Anyway…

After the primer dried, I got to spraying those bad boys gold:

If you’re thinking this is lessening my obsession with the Rustoleum metallic spray paint, you’d be dead wrong.

I think the gold is quite an improvement:

I’m maybe going to paint all the things.  Gold everything!