Give New Life to Vintage Cooler with Krylon & Kunin

Glinda has a new cooler just in time to head out for my Fall 2015 Living The Art Life™ Tour.

My aunt gifted this to me when I stopped by for a few days to visit while on my Spring 2015 Tour.  However, it looked much different when she gave it to me.

This is a vintage Li’l Brown Cooler.  Obviously it was no longer brown any where, but that was the brand name.  And no, I did not restore it to original, I gave it new life to fit my theme with my vintage trailer.

First we cleaned it all up and removed all the old seal.  I gave it a light sanding and primed the entire exterior with sandable, fillable primer.  I lightly wet-sanded the primer with a fine-grit sandpaper by hand.  The vintage cooler still had lots of little imperfections that give it further character.

I then used  Blue Ocean Breeze and Coral Isle Krylon spray paint to paint the exterior of the cooler.  I also used a metallic silver to paint all hardware because these pieces were still good and they are hard to find.

There are a few tricks to achieving a good spray paint job:

• shake REALLY well – seriously, shake for the 3 minutes it recommends even though you hear the ball rattle
• use a spray can handle – this greatly helps with fatigue and saves your fingers.  I have this one
• use a steady hand and sweep across staying about 8 inches away – too close and you get a lot of runs – too close and the spray starts to dry before it lands and you will get a sandy appearance to your paint job.  If that happens, allow to dry, wet sand, and paint again.  (a windy day and allow that to happen too)
• apply a few coats – I used 3-4 coats.  If your coats are even, you can add the following coats within minutes of one another
• allow paint to completely dry and cure before touching or reapplying hardware