Has anyone repainted metal garden furniture

[middleagedspread]

Our local antiques tatshop has a lovely 'french country style' table & 4 chairs for quite a good price.
It's definitely seen better days & has been repainted. I wonder if I could somehow repainted over the top. It would be left out the whole time for the summer & stored inside in the winter, but would need to be reasonably weather proof.
Can anyone advise the least crafty & artistic person ever whether it would possible?

We repainted some lovely metal chairs last year with hammerite, all we've had to do this year is wash them off and they look as good as when we first painted them.

Elliptic, I've googled hammerite & it looks just the thing, thank you so much. Was it quite straightforward? They even do a 'direct to rust' paint. Perfect.

I did this - the finish isn't wonderful, to be honest, but for rustic garden furniture I think it's fine.

I'm not worried if its rustic (my painting skills are not good). I think maybe a darker colour would show less mistakes?

I thought the finish was quite reasonable for garden furniture, we used one of the shades of green. So easy even my DH managed it .

Well, I'm going to buy it, paint it badly a grey/blue colour & report back. Thanks for the advice.

Or take it to a car mechanic for a tough respray!

Really? I hope you're not joking because that would be brilliant

We bought a spray can of Rustoleum from Homebase: goes straight on, (use masking tape/newspaper to protect any bits you don't want painted). Took about ten minutes and looked fab.

I painted something
similar with "smooth silver" hammerite and it looks fab.

Don't be fooled by aldi's version it's pants

Thanks so much. At least I know there's hope. I've spoken to my local builders merchants & have arranged to take a chair in to look at the paint options.
Just hope the table & chairs haven't been sold!

Yes, use a spray. The Rustoleum that Aethelfda recommends seems to come highly recommended on lots of blogs too - several thin coats is the key apparantly.

If you have a pressure washer, use that first to shift any loose bits.

We had a table powder coated. Looked nice til someone's kid covered the top in sand/gravel and rubbed it in. Now it's mostly etched. The base is still glorious though

Thanks all.
I'm struggling to find the right paint. The table & chairs are slightly 'tinny' rather than wrought iron & I think they'd look wrong in gloss paint.
My local builders merchants advised undercoat & ordinary egg shell, but warned it wouldn't last a season.
Any opinion on Annie Sloan?

You can get Hammerstein spray which is very good

Should have mentioned that we had the table sandblasted first and then powder coated in dark blue satin (nicer than the gloss) to match the detail on the house. It was a business that does work primarily in car parts but will do anything suitable.

Great thanks. I'll do some local googling & see if anyone local to me might consider the same.