This summer I started cycling again. After a long time without a bike I finally invested in one from an advert on Gumtree and spent a whole £25 on it. It was a perfectly functional bicycle but it looked rather tatty. In fact, some parts of the chrome were so rusty that you couldn’t see any of the shiny stuff anymore. But that didn’t bother me – I knew I could give it a new lease of life, and so my next upcycling project began…
I cycled around on the old, un-renovated bike for a while, just to see if I still liked cycling and whether it would be worth my while putting in the time to renovate the frame. Luckily, I loved it and the bicycle performed well (brakes, gears and tyres were all in good working order) so I got out the paint and set to work.
Actually, I began with the wire wool – but you can read about everything I did step-by-step in my bicycle renovation blog post on the Safestore blog. I’ve photographed the whole project from beginning to end so you can see exactly what I did to renovate my bicycle, and it’s all there in the blog post to help you do the same.
I even spray-painted the bell on the handlebars to match the blue frame and I tidied up the tyres using brush-on tyre black paint. The whole project only took a day from start to finish, including drying time for the spray paint.
The very next day I was on my bike and cycling to the coast to take some lovely photos. It turns out I’ve chosen the exact same shade of turquoise blue that the sky is around here! I love my bike now and am proud to ride it about. I just need some accessories (a basket or panniers would be helpful when I’m popping out for a loaf of bread) and there will be no stopping me!
Let me know what you think of my “new” bike in the comments below. Will you be renovating your old bike and if so, what colour would you choose? And if you know of anywhere that I can get a deal on a basket, please let me know!
