You can save yourself a lot of time and money for some DIY home improvement projects if you just buy regular screws and paint them yourself rather than buying the pre-painted screws. Here’s how to paint screws yourself!
We added a new side porch to our house this summer and as part of that project we installed crisp white aluminum railings all around. The railing system that we used came with some pre-painted white screws for some components, but for other parts of the installation, you had to buy separate packs of white screws. We decided it made a lot more sense to just paint the screws ourselves. If you’re in a similar situation, here’s how to paint screws successfully!
Why Paint Screws Yourself?
There are a few different reasons why you might choose to paint your own screws if you need a custom colored screw head. First of all, there’s the cost factor. Painted screws are usually significantly more expensive than regular unpainted screws. If you really do the math, it boggles the mind actually to see how much they charge for painted screws. If you’re working on an outdoor project, it’s important to make sure that you use galvanized or stainless steel screws, but it’s still much more cost-effective to take a few seconds and paint your own screws.
You may find that there are also very limited options when it comes to what types of pre-painted screws are available. If your project isn’t one of the basic colours available, then you’ll have to paint your own screws.
The final reason, and the one that honestly is the most motivating for me, is the fact that painted screws tend to come in tiny packages of only a few screws. So rather than just opening up one or two big packages of 50 screws, you’re dealing with many, many, tiny, finicky packages of five or six specialty painted screws. That can really slow you down when you’re trying to get a big project done!
How to Paint Screws
So here’s how to paint screws!
First of all, remove the number of screws that you’ll be needing from the package and fit a drill with the right type of bit for the screws you’ll need.
Find a piece of scrap wood that will fit all of the screws you want to paint. Something like a 2×4 or a 2×6 works well.
Using your drill, screw your screws into your piece of wood, leaving about the top half of the screw exposed and also leaving about an inch of space between each screw.
Bring your piece of wood out to somewhere with good ventilation and without a strong breeze.
Using a can of spray paint in the color of your choice, spray a very thin coat of paint over the top of all of your screws. Also try to get the tops of the screws from a few different angles if your screws are shaped like ours and not just flat. Chris tells me that the technical term for this type of screw we used is “structural lag”, so now you know. 🙂
Wait 10 minutes or so and spray a second coat!
Wait at least 30 minutes to an hour after your final coat of spray paint before removing your screws and putting them to use in your project!
That’s it! Such a clever way to make DIY home improvement projects just a little bit better. 🙂
Do you ever paint screws for your own DIY projects? Do you have a different method that you use?
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.