Wordy Wood Sign

 A while back, my mom commissioned me to make a sign with a cool quote she'd found. I do like a good project, so I said sure! Then we began the back and forth to decide shape and size; horizontal or vertical layout.. what kinds of fonts to use.. all that jazz. I admit that I've been a little distracted lately, so this part was moving slowly. 

We'd decided it should be made out of wood, with the slat-look. So, then it was time to brainstorm options for what kind of wood to use. I was considering different options when, across my Facebook feed, there came a post in the local "Free to a Good Home" group about someone setting out some old wooden squares. It looked as if they'd originally been used as steps in an outdoor path. From the picture, it looked like they'd had been weathered beautifully and I thought this might just work for my project and it was definitely worth a trip to the alley to check them out. 

So I packed up the kids into the car and we headed out. The post didn't have super clear directions, just that the wood was in the alley and gave the cross streets. But for each general intersection, there are four branches of alley.. so we started driving up and down the alley, scoping things out. Turns out it was also garbage day, and the truck was in the area doing its rounds, so the clock was ticking! We went north on the two on the east side of the street then headed south on the west side... nothing. The garbage truck was in the last block of the south end of the alley so, after checking the north west side (still nothing), I zoomed around and parked just at the mouth of the end of the south west side and there, just a few houses down from the garbage truck, was the wood! I nipped in and snagged it all, quick before the garbage truck came. Boom! An exciting beginning, for sure. And, turns out, just what was needed to get the project kicked into motion.

First, step: decide the orientation of the wood slates:

Once that was decided, it was time to clean the wood and reconfigure the two square pieces into one, long rectangle.

The backing pieces were all old and falling apart, so I stripped those off and tossed them away. Then, I pulled out all the rusty nails and then soaked the wood in bleach and dish soap to get rid of any unwanted critters or anything else that might be growing on the slats. 

Then, after a good solid rinsing I left them out in the sun to dry.

While I waited for things to dry off, it was time to get serious about the design. We had talked about which words Mom wanted to emphasize, so it was a matter of picking fonts and finalizing the layout. First a sketch to make sure we were thinking along the same lines..

.. and then came making it pretty on the computer. I worked up two options and she got to pick her favorite. (she picked the top one, which happens to be my favorite too!):

By this point, the wood was nice and dry and it was time for reassembling! Since the original wood backing was falling apart, I opted to replace them with new ones. However, it seemed silly to put bright new wood against the weathered old wood without trying to match them. Happily, I knew just the thing: tea and vinegar treatment! 

Transforming new wood into old (looking) wood without having to wait years and years!

So pretty! With the backing pieces matching, it was time to attach get everything put back together. Real aged-wood on the front, faux aged-wood holding it together on the back; a blank canvas, ready for some painted words.

With a pencil and some grid-enlargement finagling, I sketched in the lettering:

Add a little white paint and, voila! Transformation complete! It went from this:

to this!

Upcycled, repurposed and beautiful. Success!