If you don’t yet think that spray paint rocks…

I’m going to try to convince you again!

We used to have a fish tank and a tall bookshelf in our dining room.

Actually, wait…would you like to see what the dining room looked like when we bought the house? It’s pretty scary.

Yeah. That’s three different kinds of wallpaper, plastic chair-rail, and green carpet all in one room. And an ugly, bent light fixture(how exactly do you manage to bend a light fixture??), plus old windows that wouldn’t even shut.

We took down the wallpaper and chair rail, and painted the walls, installed wood flooring, replaced the windows, installed a(not bent) light fixture, and it was looking pretty decent in there, if a little cluttered. In an effort to clear things out a bit, we rearranged and put the bookshelf and fish tank in other rooms. I was very happy with the emptier look in our dining room, but the one wall looked awfully boring to me. I considered putting a mirror there, but it wouldn’t really reflect anything pleasant. And I considered a framed picture, but we already have one of those over the piano.

My last idea was to buy a large candleholder to put in the space, and I remembered that Pottery Barn used to sell a lovely circular black wrought iron candleholder. I checked the website only to find out they no longer sold it. It occurred to me to try Ebay, but they were still awfully expensive there, and shipping was outrageous. I really didn’t want to spend $250 on a used candleholder.

I was about to give up on the idea when I remembered that I’d seen a knock-off candleholder in a Value City Furniture ad a number of years ago. Hardly daring to hope that they’d still carry it, I checked their website. Lo and behold, there it was! And it was only $50(which was the exact amount of the rewards check I’d just gotten from my Chase Freedom credit card). The next day I marched my excited self over to the store. However, when I saw the one on display my excitement turned to dismay, because the finish(which had looked sort of black on the website) was actually a horrible 70s-ish bronzey gold. It was such an ugly color, I almost walked out with no candleholder.

I’ve seen black spray paint do some amazing things, though, so I bought it and then stopped in at Home Depot for some primer and some flat black spray paint. I took the candleholder home, laid it on some sawhorses, and sprayed away. A few hours later, I had a candleholder that looked almost exactly like the Pottery Barn original.

Here’s what it looks like in the room.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…spray paint ROCKS!