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i am an etsy addict. there. i admitted it. so when i was redoing my bedroom, i naturally began scavenging on etsy for some wall décor. i came across the most gorgeous pallet sign i’d ever seen. but it was $145. yikes. i am a tightwad thru & thru and that just didn’t work for me. so, naturally, i set out to make my own. and it took me three months. not the actual work, but life, coupled with screwing it up the first time, just made it take for-ev-er. in fact, when i texted leshia, “pallet sign’s done!” her reply was “about time!!” J she loves me. really.
here’s the scoop on the diy pallet sign:
materials:
*pallet
*some apparatus to bust it up (we found a sawzall worked best and just sawed thru the nails)
*nails
*wood glue
*spray paint
*stencil
*pen/pencil
*paint for words
*sandpaper (optional)
after you’ve busted your pallet up, decide on how big you want your sign. i wanted mine pretty big, so i left the longest boards alone and just lined up seven of them. it turned out to be roughly 2ftx3ft. i flipped the boards over to the side that i didn’t want to be the face of the sign, and used some scrap pallet wood to attach them together. i would suggest first using wood glue on each board, letting it dry, and then tacking the boards in with the finishing nails. if your nails are longer, you can drive them thru the front and just cover them with duct tape if that stick out the back, so not to scratch your wall.
after the pallet sign is assembled (it’s really not hard), the painting begins. i found several cans of rustoleum’s american accents in whitewash at a hardware store in town that’s going out of business. it was a great deal, and it was the perfect color for my sign. i painted just a coat or two to give it a little color and then began to stencil.
*here is where the three month issue comes in*
if you’ve read any of our other diy posts, you know that leshia and i rarely complete a project that we don’t screw up somewhere along the way. while i admire and aspire to be more like the blogging women who can do a diy project perfectly the first time with their eyes closed, that is just not our reality at this stage in the game. i guess we’ve learned some valuable lessons that way? i mean we can hope. so i got these 6” stencils from lowe’s. i did a rough measure of my letters for the phrase “you have my whole heart for my whole life.” it was a tight squeeze, but i thought i had it. wrong. i managed to get “you have my” on the first line and it looked pretty darn good. i even remember calling leshia and saying “i can’t believe i haven’t screwed this up yet! it is looking so good.” pride cometh before the fall, right? wellll, “whole heart” was up next, and i got to, oh, about “whole hea” when i realized that it was either going to say “whole hear” or “whole heat” or something weird and definitely not what i’d envisioned. so i got mad. naturally. i put the sign away and didn’t work on it for a while. but i’m kind of glad i didn’t, because i planned out my final attempt very carefully and am so happy with how it turned out.
when i finally got the gumption to try again, i started by sanding the words that i had painted on as much as i could, and then applied lots more coats of the same color. because the wood isn’t treated, it soaks that paint up like crazy. so once it was sufficiently covered, i started stenciling.
i printed out my letters off of microsoft word and cut them out, taped them on, and stenciled in pen. i didn’t mind using a pen because i knew i was using black paint. but if you’re not all wild and crazy like me, you might want to go with pencil. in hindsight the whole pen thing really wasn’t the greatest idea. once i got the words stenciled on, i set out painting.
i just used black craft paint and only one coat because i liked how it looked a little distressed. if the words were darker, i would definitely sand it, and i still may. but for now, i love it. i think this is one of my favorite projects i’ve done so far. i’m pretty much obsessed with it. so, my charge to you: plan your stenciling. you will be better for it. best of luck! J
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