Over a year and a half ago we bought two of these planters from CB2…

We actually got them for the patio of our first place (a cozy two bedroom apartment on the other side of town). Back then, silver was our go-to metallic accent color. It matched everything we had, and it went really well with the exterior of our apartment complex. Around the time they came in, we were in the middle of the maybe-we-should-buy-a-house stage. In light of that, we decided to put the patio beautification on hold and store the planters in my parents’ garage. Fast forward a year and a half… The house had been bought, renovations were underway, and we were moving into our new (to us) house. While we were going through the “stuff” we had stored in my parents garage, we stumbled upon our unused planters – STILL in the box! We had totally forgotten about them. To make things even sweeter, we’d been looking to buy planters for the carport! Score!

Btw, it was SUPER hot outside. So the grass looked dead.

Since moving into the house, we’ve turned a page in the accent color book. While silver is a great color that we still use it from time to time, we especially like the way oil-rubbed bronze interacts with our dark floors and bright white trim. All of our door hardware (more about that here) are now oil-rubbed bronze, so it’s only natural that our planters be that color too – especially since they will be going beside the two back doors which were painted a black/brown. For our hue of choice, we went with Rustoleum’s Oil Rubbed Bronze Metallic Spray Paint. That stuff… is awesome. Great color, coverage and the whole nine yards. I wish we could find about a billion other things to use it on!

Obviously, painting plain planters (try saying that 10 times fast!) isn’t rocket science, so I’m not going to get into much detail there. You know the drill… keep the can about 10 inches from the surface, spray in steady back-in-forth motion, slightly overlap each stroke, yada, yada, yada. Just remember, you’re better off doing lots of light coats than a few heavy ones. It gives you better coverage and a streak-free final product. Oh, and we ended up using almost exactly two cans to do both planters.

Now that we had these spiffy “new” planters, we needed to fill them. When picking out flowers, we kept in mind they would be under the carport, so the plants we chose needed to be extremely shade-tolerant. We also wanted to get something self-contained that wouldn’t have to be transferred to a new container. Why? We wanted less fuss. Plain and simple. We’re definitely going to be getting our gardening on in the near future, but buying something that was already in a permanent home just made us feel more comfortable. Taking all of that into consideration, we settled on these beauties…

These are Impatiens. We picked them up at Lowe’s for $8.99 a pop. They haven’t fully bloomed yet, but if they end up looking anything like the tag, we’re stoked. The tag says they will bloom from spring through fall, they are fast growing (funny since they are Impatiens), and they are good to go in the shade. If you have brown thumbs (okay, enough with the puns… we are the Browns… brown thumbs. I know that’s got to be annoying but I couldn’t resist.) like ourselves, be sure to read the tag. The back of the tag is full of info about transplanting, water usage, pruning, fertilizing and such.

The flower pots are pretty shallow so we put some bricks we havd left over from a previous project in the bottom and set them on top. This puts the flowers just above the lip of the planters and keeps the planters from moving around as well!

After a little snip of the hangers and a drink of water, the flowers were all set in their new home…

The plants ended up being the perfect size for these planters. They aren’t too crowded so they have enough room to grow…

Yay for the long lost planters! Now we’re one step closer to completing Operation Carport Prettification. It’s a small step, but it’s a step nonetheless. We’re going to keep our fingers crossed that we have a bright and sunny weekend so we can move on to our other outdoor projects!