Dreadful Penny

As planned, we spent some time on July 4th weekend disassembling, painting, and reassembling my bike.  (Ok, my husband did all the mechanical bits AND some of the painting; I bought the paint and applied a good amount of it.)  I still have some copper accents to add, but today I took it out for my first post-makeover ride and I was really happy with the results.

I’ll admit, I had envisioned something more purely Steampunk, but I’m no perfectionist and I’m not ready to spend hours getting all the details right.  There’s a lot of steel and chrome on my bike that I’d rather have in copper or brass, and the pedals, seat, and handlebars are clearly modern.  I could do more.  Instead, I’m happy to call my bike “Steampunk-inspired” and delight in the simple fact that it looks much older than it did two weeks ago.

Here’s my bike before.  I always thought that the cruiser lines weren’t a match with the sporty paintjob and detailing.

My husband took it apart and hung it, piece by piece, from the rafters in our garage for painting.

Here’s how it looks today.  The body is now Charleston Green and the rims and spokes are copper.  I’ll be adding copper wire detail around the vertical supports on the body frame; those should pull the look together.

Closeup on the basket.  I wired an assortment of vintage buttons from my collection onto a weathered basket that I picked up second-hand when I visited Nantucket.

I like that my bike is more “Murder She Wrote” now.  The paintjob looks amateurish and it’s far from perfect, and I like that, too.  In some light, it looks black; I bought the green by accident and then discovered that it was a great color.   Yep, this feels more like me.