Melissa & Doug Cleaning Set Makeover

Secondhand Melissa and Doug Cleaning Set given a beautiful makeover!

I found this cleaning set on Facebook Marketplace for $15 and I couldn't help but spice it up with some stuff I had laying in the garage.

Here's How I Did It

I wanted to leave the parts that were the natural wood colour, so I taped them off using painters tape. Then I lightly sanded the dust pan, the mop and the stand so that the spray paint would adhere.

Since the colours I was covering were so vibrant, I started with several coats of white primer. The day I did this was very warm and sunny so I only needed to wait 5-10 minutes between coats before I could add another one. I was planning on painting the dust pan pink, but during this process I decided I liked it better white, so it got an extra coat of primer to finish it off.

As I expected the bristles were the most challenging part of this project. It was a toss up whether I was going to try acrylic paint or spray paint, but I already had the spray paint area set up, so that's what I tried.

(If you try painting them with acrylic paint I would love your feedback on how it worked!)

The first few coats of paint on the bristles I was a little nervous so I did really thin layers, by the end my goal was to spray each coat as thick as I could without it dripping off. A tip I learned to get the bristles on the inside of the broom was to stand it upright, apply a small amount of pressure straight down and tilt the broom handle to one side, paint all the green I could see, tilt it the other way, repeat.

Once the majority of the bristles were covered in primer, I switched to the pink spray paint and continued until I was happy with the coverage of the pink.

At the very end, once it was all dry and the tape was removed, there was some stringy paint between the bristles near the base (I think an excess of paint). If that happens to you just use a long stick, I used a screw driver, to comb through the bristles to remove the stringy paint.

When I was sanding the blue piece of the mop some of the dust got onto the mop. I would tape it before sanding to avoid this if I was doing it again.

I thought about leaving the mop white, took the tape off and decided I didn't love it, so I re-taped it and painted it pink.

The duster was probably my favourite part to re-do, it was so easy and turned out so well.

I trimmed down some of the fluffy yellow part so that it was more flat and easy to hot glue on. Next I cut a bunch of this beautiful yarn into 2-3inch pieces and hot glued them in the shape of a U all around the duster, making sure it looked nice and full, hiding all of the yellow.

Afterthought : When I was gluing the yarn on I spent a lot of time making sure the top of the duster looked nice and evenly covered, then realized it hangs upside down on the stand. In a 'theoretical next time', I would maybe spend more time on the yarn closest to the handle.

The string holding each piece to the base was also very bright colours, and I had a broken leather bracelet laying around that, when cut into 4 chunks, worked as the perfect replacement. If the leather bracelet didn't work out I was going to use some brown twine I found at the Dollarstore.

I think this makeover turned out so, so cute and if you try one I would LOVE to see how it turns out.

Send in a photo or tag me in your project on Instagram!

@PrairieMamasBlog

MATERIALS:

(not all, but some are affiliate links 😊)

• Melissa and Doug Cleaning Set

• Sanding Block or sand paper

• Spray Paint: white primer and pink

• Thick Yarn

• Painters Tape