Painting Galvanized Steel

I got this idea from pinterest I believe.  It's been awhile, so I can't find the original pin :(  Sorry!  The tubs that I saw were painted with house numbers on them and looked so pretty!  I decided to try it out on my own, even though after researching how to paint galvanized steel, it looked like it might turn into a disaster.  Oh well, I got the tubs at estate sales for about 5 bucks each so I didn't have much to lose.  I read something about cleaning the surface with vinegar, so that's what I did.  Not sure if it helped or not.

For my first tub, I went with the number idea, using a previous house number for a little nostalgic value.  You can have that even if you've only been married 4.5 years, right?  It turns out it's hard to spray paint numbers onto a curved surface without any bleed through.  So, I sprayed my brown spray paint onto a plate, a styrofoam plate, which I wouldn't recommend since the paint was eating through the plate within about 30 seconds!  I had a stencil from Hobby Lobby to use and just applied the paint with a sponge brush.

Not quite perfect, but that's ok.  Now I need to figure out what to do with it.  I figured I could put some ice and soda in it for a party, but we haven't had one of those for quite awhile!  I also thought about putting some plants in one, but I didn't get motivated soon enough and with it being around 100 degrees every day, I don't really want to put any plants through the moving process at the moment!  Even if they survived, I'd probably forget to water them and then they'd die anyway.  Oh well, the spiders and stray cats seem to like to hang out around them for now!

For my second tub I went with a chevron pattern.  I sprayed the whole thing blue, taped off sections with painters tape (I didn't have any exact method here, sorry), then spray painted over that white.

Here they are side by side.  I used the same blue on them to help them 

go together without matching too much,

These tubs have been out on the porch for nearly a year.  There's a few scrapes in the paint, so if you're planning on using them a lot, painting might not be the best.  If they're just sitting there looking pretty, they should hold up pretty well though!