Friday, February 7, 2020

DIY Wooden Sign (under $10 too!)


Hello, hello! 
It sure has been a while since I've blogged, and there's good reason for that. Life has been a little busy around here. While I have been doing some projects here and there, it's definitely slowed down a bit. 

One of my most recent projects, aside from moving furniture around (haha!), was "building" a wooden sign for our family room.

Before I moved some furniture around, we had a large bookcase in this spot. I felt it was a little too big for the area and I wanted something smaller here, so this thrift store dresser/buffet table fit the bill. After rearranging some things downstairs, we had room on this wall right above the table. This spot looked a little sad and empty. Considering that I added tons of photos in the same room recently, I wanted to put up something besides a large photo in this area. Immediately, I thought a large wooden sign would look great and would tie in some of the wood pieces and trim nicely.

Here is a look at the space I'm talking about:

 It's a good sized wall that was just missing something



Alright, on to the materials I used...all I needed to purchase were a few inexpensive ones...

1. Two 8ft pieces of wood (from HD)
2. Stain (already had)
3. Large poster board (from Michaels) 
4. Black sharpie marker (already had)
5. Large ruler
6. Pencil to trace letters
7. Nails and/or wood glue


I think I spent around $5 for everything. It did help that I already had most of the supplies on hand, but even I didn't this project would only be around $10 to complete.

OK, so here is a quick run down of what I did, with pictures of course ;)



I had already had a stencil set that I purchased last year from the Dollar Tree to use for the letters. Because I didn't want my letters to be rounded, I ended up using a ruler to straighten them out, but you can write your letters however you want, of course. Then I went over everything with a Sharpie and colored it in.


I chose a verse from Matthew- Let your light shine!  

 

Here is the hubs cutting the wood trim for me :) 
*Two pieces at 33"
*Two pieces at 22.5"


For the wood stain, I chose to use what we already had on hand which was Minwax in Provincial. It's definitely one of my favs.


Once the stain was dry, it was time for nailing and stapling (yes, I stapled the wood together because I was too lazy to use wood glue and wait.for.it.to.dry...😂)...


The nails we already had were pretty much the perfect size for this project. Thankfully, they weren't too large that they split the wood and they were just long enough to hold the 2 ends together! Hooray!



I only used 4 nails (one for each side) and this wasn't enough to keep the frame sturdy. This is where the staples come in handy...haha!
I stapled the edges together too (no one will even notice) and stained over it so that they are hidden.


I'm so happy with the way the sign turned out! It was just the perfect piece for this spot!




I also chose to write another verse on the other side of the poster board so that we can change up the sign if we want. Also, since the poster board is light enough to just "sit" inside the frame, if I want to replace it with another board, all I have to do is take this one out and put a new one in. 💓💓



I love that these verses are one of the first things we see when we come downstairs. It helps to know the truth that God is always there...a good reminder especially for us in our journey of foster care. 💕




So if you are looking for a small project to do and one that is super inexpensive, give this one a try!  😍