Painted Tyre Planters

Now that my daughter is up and walking I was excited to start playing out in the garden with

her. She's such an active little thing, she hasn't wanted to stay still from the moment she was born, and she absolutely loves the freedom and the space she has outside.   Not being a keen gardener our outside space was pretty boring, a plain bit of lawn with a few fruit trees and a fenced off veggie patch.  I wanted to create something to make it interesting and exciting for her, to give her, her own space to play and explore. Naturally I turned to Pinterest, some of the ideas I felt I could manage, some were a a bit beyond me, but there was one reoccurring theme that really inspired me, tyres!  I loved the idea of recycling them to make cool, bright, planters but I found it surprisingly hard to find information on the best paint to use so decided to work it out for myself and pass the knowledge on to you.

Sourcing and Prepping the Tyres

 

This was incredibly simple, I happen to live just down the road from a scrap yard, I popped in on the way back from my food shop, asked if they had any to spare and was shown to a massive shed full of as many tyres as I wanted to take away. I presume they have to pay to get rid of them normally so they were more than happy for me to take some off their hands.  Having now painted them my advice would be that if you have a choice take the ones that are most worn as they're smoother and easier to get a good finish on the paint. 

To prep the tyres I used a pressure washer and gave them a good spray down to get rid of any debris and dirt and allowed them to dry thoroughly before painting.  If you don't have a pressure washer I'm sure a bucket of soapy water and a scrub with a sponge would work fine but it would take quite a bit longer so if you can borrow a pressure washer it will make your life easier (and it's strangely satisfying pressure washing things).

Uncercoat

 

No paint that you buy says 'suitable for painting tyres' (except some tiny pots that people use to paint details on the tyres on their car, apparently that's a thing???) so I went for a multipurpose cheap primer that's suitable for exterior use,  this one is around £10 for B&Q and I used about half a 2.5lt tin to paint 10 tyres.  Use a nice large brush, the one I used was around 10cm, and paint a nice generous coat across the whole tyre, you don't have to be particularly neat with it so it's a fairly quick job, I managed to get 10 tyres painted during a 1 hour nap time!

 

 

Colour 

I couldn't find any clear advice on what type of paint would work best for tyres so I decided to go for spray paint, partly because I wanted to use quite a few different colours and it worked out cheaper to buy cans of spray paint rather than lots of tins of paint and partly because it would be quicker to apply.  I went for this Valspar paint from B&Q which was on offer at £5 a can but any spray paint that is suitable for outdoor use should be fine.  I didn't look at the bottles properly though so didn't realise that one of the bottles was matt and the others gloss, I really liked the gloss affect with the vibrant colours so would recommend going for gloss.  In terms of deciding which colours I did some research on google looking at different colour combinations but in the end just went with my gut instinct when I was in the shop. 

To save paint I didn't worry about painting the underneath which won't be visible but I made sure I did a nice steady layer to get an even finish and they let it dry before doing a second coat.  The great thing about painted tyres though is it's pretty forgiving as the surface is uneven anyway so it's really easy to get a good affect.  I didn't worry about getting the paint in every tiny ridge on the tyre as it would waste a lot of paint doing it, just as long as I got an even coat the overall affect is great. One 400ml can of paint just did 3 normal sized car tyres.

The Finished Article (well sort of)

 

So here are the finished tyres, I must admit they turned out even better than I expected and I love the colours! Now I just need to source enough soil to fill them. Watch this space to see what I have planned for them.

 

The Happy Geek