Painted Wood Sign Tutorial

I woke up this morning singing!

Oh what a beautiful morning!  Oh what a beautiful day! I’ve got a beautiful feeling, everything’s going my way!

And look at this guy gettin' it!

 

Lovin the enthusiasm on this fine Monday morning.

It is so rare to wake up on a Monday feeling like this.  But I did.  Feels almost like an accomplishment.  I am not sure why I woke up like this but it could be any number of things from the beautiful and un-characteristic weather we have been having lately or the beautiful blue hydrangeas the fella surprised me with...

 

Or maybe it's that I feel so good after a weekend of getting a lot accomplished at the house.  On Friday, the fella and I made a list of things that had to be done by this week or else!!!!

-          Paint and hang a wooden sign out by the pool Done

-          Paint a test wall in our long hallway Done

-          Hang a chandelier outside Done

-          Visit Home Depot to purchase materials for some projects and to scout out materials for future projects Done

-          Use the butternut squash I bought in a dish Didn’t get to it but will do tonight, hopefully

-          Swim Done, done and done

-          Try a local, non-chain restaurant We did this three times, bad on us!

-      Paint remainder of the outdoor chairs Four down and two to go

-          See “We Are the Millers” at the theatre It was the funniest movie since Hangover.  Go see it!

-          And the pies de resistance….build a regulation size beer pong table for future parties! Done, with the exception of needing to paint the design in the middle

Sneak peek of the Beer Pong table

 

Looks like fun , eh?

I will go into more detail on the outdoor chandelier, outdoor chairs and beer pong table soon.  Today I want to share with you some of the details about the wooden sign we made.

First thing….the wood.  I used a piece left behind in the garage by the folks who sold us the house.  It was a pretty color of wood, rough enough to not need sanding and had a cool old worn look.

 

Originally I was going to follow this tutorial and paint the sign a pretty color and distress it, but I then got lazy and said forget it….but I will try this method soon.  Everything this woman does is amazing, especially her signs.  Check out her blog.

Back to my sign, I then decided where I wanted to hang it and what size it needed to be to fit in the space.  Then I held the wood for the fella while he sawed it down for me.  Luckily, there is enough wood left over to make another sign.  Maybe a Christmas presie for someone???

I already knew what I wanted the sign to say. “Laissez le bon temps rouler!”  For those of you who don’t know, this is a common saying in New Orleans and Louisiana which translates from French to mean “Let the good times roll”.  My father’s family is from New Orleans and New Orleans is the fella and I’s most favorite place to visit, so this is a common fraise used around our house.  One reason we fell in love with our house was that it is set up well for entertaining.  We think this sign will help set the tone for some fun times in the backyard!

Now with the painting.  Here are the tools I used.

 

Pretty run of the mill craft store stuff wouldn't you say?

I divided the length of the board, in inches, by the number of letters I needed to paint.  That gave me the size I could make each letter and have it all fit on the board easily.  Each letter could be an inch and a half.  I counted an extra letter space for the punctuation at the end.  I also counted the first letter as two because I wanted it a little bigger than the rest. 

So I painted on the fraise.  Here is a shot of it before we hung it.  I left a little space on the left of the "L" because I am going to add something over there eventually.  That will be a surprise for another time.  Also, I took that extra space into consideration in my calculations of space per letter.

 

Here you also get to see a sneak peek of the outdoor chairs I am working on.

So then we drilled it in. Please try and avoid looking into the messy garage.

 

And voila!

 

This is one pleased giraffe, especially considering how little work had to go into it……..I basically just painted a board.  It took about 20-30 minutes total and was free. Score.

Stay tuned for the outcome of the beer pong table, chairs and more!

Once again, yours truly,

the baby giraffe covered in paint