How to Prep and Paint Rusty Metal Railings

in this video I'm going to show you how to paint a rusty metal handrail and we're going to do it right now here I have a very rusty metal handrail and it needs a little attention as you can see it's rusting out the paint's coming off and this is really typical and this is probably honestly something that I would do off camera but I've received a couple comments asking how I would do it so you can do it however you want but in this video I'm going to show you how I'm going to do it so let's go first thing I'm going to do is take a drop cloth and just put it down Loosely around this to try and catch all of the or most of the paint and rust that I'm going to be scraping off of here now keep in mind especially if you have an old house you could definitely have lead paint here so you can test it you can do any of the things that you want to do by putting up plastic and using a hea filter on a vacuum that's all up to you and definitely wear a respirator or at least a dust mask while you're scraping this stuff I'm going to take a 5 in one you can use any kind of paint scraper and I'm just going to try and get the loose paint off of this thing I'm not going to worry too much about the rust right now just the loose bit get a paint here's a good example of what I want to get rid of just take my 5 in one or my scraper and just get all the loose stuff off of here once the paint kind of stops coming off with the scraper can move on to the next spot basically you want to do that on this entire thing might be here a while [Laughter] obviously this is not the only option you could also do like a a wire wheel attachment to a drill and do this whole thing that way um you could also if you felt so inclined and you had a sand blaster or something like that you could take this handrail off and do you know sand blast it but with me I don't even have that option because right here it goes into the concrete of course I could always cut it and then put a thing there and reattach it but if you have minimal tools and you don't want to make this a huge project this is the way to go you want to make sure you get underneath the handrail actually that's in good shape a little bit right here now this is kind of a a tricky part right here so I'm not even going to worry about it it's just because of this detail I'm not really going to be able to get a flat spot here I'll show you what I'm going to do with that in a minute minute if I wanted to spend all week here I could probably get all of this paint off I just have to really work at it I could do it but I don't want to be here all week another tricky spot right here but there's a lot of rust next up wire brush I'm going to use this around this entire thing and this is what I'm going to use to get in here with these spindles because of their wacky design I'll give you an example right here of about how much I'm going to do this this will get more of that loose paint off of there and some more of that rust and my goal is not to get all of the rust off I'll show you why in a little bit but just do what I can like this and about that is good and I can give you an example on a a really rusty spot down here this will get in to these tight spaces and basically going to want to make it look kind of like that so again do that for the entire handrail if you want to make it really easy you can use a wire wheel just like this on your drill but I would wear safety glasses cuz these little wires can pop out sometimes and you definitely don't want that in your eye but this is will make it a lot faster especially for big spots like this don't get a caught on your drop cloth I'm try and get in all these little details here [Applause] [Music] and this might even work better for stuff like that [Applause] [Music] Okay so that's as far as I'm going to go it looks pretty good not perfect obviously but I got a lot of that rust off and a lot of that loose paint so I'm going to clean up all of this debris and move on to the next step now I'm going to take some mineral spirits and wipe this down just to get all of the dust and anything else that might be on here and prep it for priming see if I wipe it you can see all that that metal that paint everything just get all that off for my primer coat I'm going to use this Rustoleum rust reformer and honestly I probably could have sprayed this right over the this as it was without doing everything I just did but I think doing that is going to be an extra step that's going to make this last a lot longer this claims to be able to go right over rust and turn it into a nice sealed paintable surface and it will prevent rust in the future so I think this is going to be good and then I'll paint over that this is black I am actually going to change these railings to Black the white gets dirty so quick and if it does rust it looks terrible I don't think think it'll look as bad with black but since this is a spray I'm going to be very careful and mask off everything that I don't want black paint on and it is a little windy so wish me luck we'll see how it [Applause] goes put the me on there I am only doing this much because it is [Applause] windy all right I'm going to try and paint it even though it's windy I'll just be careful and try not to put it on too thick but if I do the good thing is runs don't rust try and get in all these little little crevices by the way I have a little piece of cardboard here to block anywhere I don't want the paint I like to do short little burst like this so I don't put too much on I can always go back around and hit anything that I missed try and get underneath and honestly like places like this I really don't care if I put on too much I think the more the better especially on top of those bolts the hardest part these things okay now I'm going to go around I that I got a coat on everything and you can see like spots like this is's a little bit of a miss and this is a little light right here and there's a big Miss right here so I'll just go around the whole thing put a nice light coat all around this is looking good though I like [Applause] it I like this so much better than when it was white actually this is the same kind of Sheen as the paint I was going to use and you can use it as a finish coat so I'm just going to do that I used up the can and it's nice and even it's got plenty of paint on it or rust reformer but if you did want to top coat it you need to wait 24 hours to let it cure and then I'd take 150 grit sanding sponge sand this down and then put your top coat on but I'm happy with that I think that looks way better than the white now my only issue is I can't decide if I really do want to paint this black or paint it white what do you think leave a comment below what's your opinion if you had to paint a rusty handrail like this I hope the video helps thanks for watching we'll see you on the next one how was that shot get a good mask shot and do something like uh sand blast it if you really wanted to go that far having trouble seeing when we make this video we should put in the classic SpongeBob 4 hours later don't get a CAU on your drop cloth don't do that I already warned you not to do that don't get a CAU on your drop careless don't forget to get where the sun don't shine is that a carpenter ant I got a spray for carpenter ants is what I got to do I mean it's black so guess it' be okay on the driveway I'm going to repaint this what do you think do it anyways huh I feel like we should just go bold and and paint it black it's black oh right you tell me in the comments yeah

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 31,104

Keywords: the fixer, home repair, removing rust from a guardrail, removing rust from a handrail, repaint your guardrail, repaint your handrail, rust-oleum rusty metal primer, spray paint your handrails, how to remove rust on metal railing

Id: fhDiPjhyi34

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2024