Another day. Another Craigslist find. This time, it was a vintage bicycle that I initially bought for Dan, before becoming educated on the difference between a man and woman’s bike (I know, I have a lot to learn). Nevertheless, I got the bike for him mostly because I secretly liked it anyway, so it all worked out. Here’s the bike in its original form.

Loved the handle bars and the seat, but I wasn’t crazy about the color. I’ve always wanted a vintage bike in a powdery blue or minty green color. And with Dan’s handiness, I knew we (he) could make it happen =)

First things first, we had to take the bike apart. And of course, take pictures along the way so we knew how to put it back together.

From there, Dan sanded down all the green bars a bit so the new paint would go on smoothly. He then built a fun little contraption so that the bike parts could hang from the ceiling and he could spray paint evenly and on all sides at once. 

After primer and two layers of paint, he added three layers of polyurethane to protect the bike and make it shine. He also shined up the rest of the chrome, bringing the whole bike back to life.

After putting the frame back together, we stopped at Bert’s Bikes to get new tires because I ran something over and popped one of them. Naturally.

Once we added the new tires, we were smooth sailing.

I did end up finding another bike on Craigslist for Dan. And yes, it’s a man’s bike. That project will be coming up and once complete, we can ride around the village and off into the sunset together =)