How to Fix Old Rusty Metal Furniture & Make It Stunning

Do you have outdoor furniture that’s seen better days? If you’ve got metal patio furniture, maybe it’s a little rusty or a lot rusty. Scroll down and see what my chair looked like before the makeover.

I purchased this chair from the vintage market a couple of years ago. Would you believe I was actually drawn to the aqua blue color and the bits of rust?

As you know we love old, worn and vintage items that have a sense of history. Well if you’ve had anything start to rust before, you know how quickly it can spread.

As a result of my chair sitting out in the elements, this worn vintage chair soon looked too shabby and was no longer chic. In fact, you couldn’t even sit on it anymore, because the rust would transfer to your clothes.

Obviously, a makeover was in order. So with a little elbow grease, we were able to rid this vintage chair of its rust and breathe new life into old rusty furniture.

Table of Contents

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Rusty aqua blue metal outdoor chair on a paver patio.

Can you see the beauty of this piece of furniture hiding under all of this rust?

What You’ll Need to Restore Rusty Furniture

Tools:

grinder or sander
drill with wire brush attachments

Supplies:

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Restoring Metal Chair in Action

Step 1: Prepare Rusty Furniture for Paint

As you can see, my rusty furniture needed prep work before we could paint.

Now my sweet husband is not really a fan of painting or refinishing furniture. However, with my busy schedule he offered to use the grinder to remove the rust. Clearly I wasn’t going to turn down his offer.

Depending on the condition of your outdoor furniture you may not need to sand.

If the paint is not flaking and the metal surface is not pitted you can skip this step and just apply Rust-oleum’s Rust Reformer. It will convert the rust into a protected paintable surface.

Steve used a “flap disk” (60 grit) on the grinder to remove the chipping paint and rust.

In addition to the grinder, we also used wire brush attachments on the drill to remove paint and rust.

As you can see the wire brush will fit into small areas the grinder will not.

After we had removed the chipping paint and rust, we used a damp cloth to wipe down the chair.

If you decide that you do not need to sand or grind your rusty furniture, be sure to clean your piece well before applying the Rust Reformer.

This will ensure that the primer and paint will adhere well to your surface.

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Step 2: Primer

While there are many spray paints with primer, from my experience when working with rusty furniture you’ll want to use a product that will stop the rust from spreading.

That is exactly what this product from Rust-oleum does, it converts the rusty areas on your furniture to a protected paintable surface.

Apply the Rust Reformer on all sides of the rusty metal furniture.

Spray in long strokes, pressing and releasing the nozzle at the beginning and end of each pass.

This will ensure that you will not get paint runs on your surface.

Step 3: Apply Exterior Spray Paint

Restore Rusty Furniture white exterior spray paint.

To ensure that your metal furniture will stay looking good for years to come, choose an exterior spray paint.

In the same way the Rust Reformer was applied, apply 2 coats of spray paint, using long strokes, pulling the trigger slightly off the piece and releasing the trigger at the end of the stroke.

Restore rusty furniture with white outdoor spray paint.

Additionally, make sure you hold the paint can 6-12 inches from your furniture and do 2 light coats.

In my opinion, nothing is worse than trying to rush a project by applying the paint to heavy and then getting runs in the finish.

Also, I must say that I love the trigger pull of the Universal spray paint. I found that I had much less hand fatigue.

In fact, I wish all spray paint cans had this feature.

Black spray paint is applied to the legs of the metal chair.

For the leg and arm piece of this chair, I chose a contrasting color.

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