A couple of months ago I saw a picture of Robin Berkhuizen on Instagram, with a beautiful terrace made of wood with on it a couple of oblong, black planters. We also have a terrace from wood, so I saw the planters already standing on our terrace. I started looking for such planters everywhere. Nowhere to be found, anyway not against a payable price. And I wanted three of them, preferable all the same size. After a long search I suddenly run into a couple of planters made from Fiber clay. They were not black at all but a strange brown grey color. And you could see that they were outside for a while. But the price was good. So I found my planters and I would paint them black myself.
But what kind of paint do I need? They have to stay outside in Summer and Winter. I searched on the internet which paint I could use, but didn’t find a lot about painting Fiber clay.
Fiber Clay is made of fiberglass combined with clay. It’s light weighted and can be used in Cold and in warm areas.
Often there are a lot of little holes on the outside, like there were air bubbles when making the planter. And they look a little bit like concrete.
I wanted to make them high gloss black, which is not so nice if you see all the holes.
It’s impossible to fill all the holes, but I started to fill at least the biggest holes.
I filled the holes with this “Allesvuller” from Alabastine
For three planters I almost used the complete package.
I let it dry for 1 day and after that I used a sander to make it all equal again. After sanding you clean it all with a small broom and sweep the rest of the dust off with cleaning fluid that is also good to make it fat free.
As primer I used universal paint from Wijzonol which is suitable for all kind of materials like wood, plastic, iron, concrete etc.
Because I was painting outside, the paint store advised me to use turpentine based paint, this stays wet for a longer time, so easier to use outside.
The next layer was the high gloss black paint, also turpentine based.
Pff I was so disappointed with the results, you could see exactly where I filled the holes and it stills looks like there were a thousand holes or more in all three planters.
The day after that I painted another layer with the high gloss paint and it became a little bit better. So in total I painted 4 layers of high gloss.
Off course the holes aren’t completely gone, but it looks much better
When finished with painting I bought 6 grass plants at Avri and hydro grains and garden soil at Cranenbroeck.
First some root cloth and after that a complete bag of Hydro grains in the planter, then the garden soil and finally the plants.
I’m very satisfied with the result, it looks like they’ve been there forever.
kisses Claudia
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