All You Need is Love...and Old Wood!

April 17, 2011

All You Need is Love...and Old Wood!

As I was looking around for inspiration for art, I found this photo on Decorpad. You can check out the original post over at House*Tweaking.

I loved the rustic feel and the message of the sign and thought I might be able to manage making one like it. I only had one thing stopping me: dinero. We don't have a lot of extra dough for me to run around and try all sorts of projects, so I was on the hunt for some old boards. One day, while walking Mac, I noticed that someone had taken down their own fence and had put the old fence pieces on the side of the road. After work (while in heels!), I snatched a few pieces (probably looking like a crazy person!) and took them home.

After sawing, staining, screwing, whitewashing, painting, and sealing, here's the final product:

Here's how I did it and spent $.59. Almost free (which makes everything more fun!)

1. Find old wood. If you can't find any, buy some wood. I think that this technique would still work on new wood! If you can, look super cool and snatch it up while wearing heels and dangly earrings!

2. Measure your wood and think about what size you'd like your sign to be. I measured the wall to figure out what size would look okay (hopefully!)

3. Take a picture of your dog laying on the wood. He likes being involved!

4. Have your manly hubby (or someone who knows how to properly cut wood) cut the wood.

5. Use two planks (also cut to size) on the back to keep the pieces together. I used screws to attach it together and then glued the seams.

6. I used the dark stain (Minax Jacobean) that I had left over from our kitchen table redo. I slathered it on unevenly and then rubbed it into the wood. If I had used untreated wood (or brand new wood), I probably would have tried using several different shades of stain to create the uneven and differently faded wood.

7. Right after applying the stain, I used a mixture of flat white latex paint and water to create the whitewashed look. As you can see in the above photo, I wasn't too particular and just slathered in on. After doing painting the plank, I would go back over it and rub the paint into the wood with a dry cloth. You can see how different the stained planks look compared to the stained and whitewashed planks!

8. Give it some time to dry and then whip out the color that you are going to use to paint the letters (or whatever you decide to put on it!)

9. Using chalk, draw/write the design. This makes it easy to fix it until you get it how you want it! You may want to use a marker/pencil to draw over the design once you have it how you like it--that way, it won't get smudged up!

10. Paint!

11. To make it a little more worn looking, give it a good sanding and let the wood show through.

12. I finished off my sign with a light coat of Polycrylic. Since it would be inside, I wanted to make sure that it would stay together and sealed up...in other words, I didn't want splinters in my head if I ran into it!