This post could easily go either way today. Depending on your experience (or lack of) with dud salt and pepper grinders, you’re either going to fully understand how I get through so many mills, or on the other hand not have the slightest clue why on earth you would even make this DIY. Like, really… pepper mills…. pencil pots…? Really?
YES! For some reason they never last more than six months to a year in our home and it’s always the pepper that goes first. One day it just gives up on it’s one, single function in life and decides it’s time to retire to the back of the cupboard for all eternity.
So after spending four hours cleaning my kitchen the other day I decided that, instead of leaving them cluttering up the limited cupboard space we have or just throwing them out I would challenge myself to DIY with them! I have got to admit it was a bit of a strange one, even for me and now I’m looking at the photos I wish I’d have a candle handy as I think they would make better candle holders!
You could even slip a test tube in and use them as a small vase. Just throwing those ideas out there in case you’re as unlucky with seasoning as I am. If not then you might want to give this one a miss.
Materials
Old Pepper Pots | Paint | Wood Sticks & Cord
You need to find a piece of wood, plastic or metal that is just too big to easily fit into the inside of the pot. You will also need to be able to attach the cord to the ‘stick’. It will become clear later why exactly. Keep reading!
Once you have something resembling the image above check to make sure you can hang the whole thing from the string without it falling off.
I love the smooth look you get when you dip any item into paint and it also means you don’t have to sand because, well no one has time for that! You can just paint onto the surface but it’s going to take a lot of coats. My advice – pick up a cheap can of emulsion (latex) paint and get dipping!
Bring the pepper pot out of the paint at an angle and let some of the paint drip off before bringing it upright. This will hopefully stop the pot dropping back into the paint as it did for me, a number of times. Before you begin the dipping it’s sensible to set up something to hang the cord from at this point. This could be a pipe over two piles of books or two chairs etc. Set it up above the paint so you can leave all the excess to drip off.
Keep checking on the progress, scraping off the excess paint from the bottom of the pot every now and then. Once it’s dry you are ready to use your new pencil pot, or vase, or candle holder, or whatever!
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