DIY Barn Wood Signs

My Sweet Husband makes the most beautiful barn wood tables....

This is the top of the table, the barn wood is over 100 years old.  He is getting ready to add the legs which are made out of black cast iron.  He is so handsome...and handy...and those are two of the MANY reasons I love him!  

I took the barn wood that he did not use and made some barn wood signs to hang in our home!  


I just used regular paint for the signs.  I used a permanent marker to draw the letters and then painted them.  I let the paint dry and then sealed the entire board with clear coat.  Here is a pic of the clear coat I used and the finished signs! 

The EAT sign is 3 separate pieces of wood.   I have it up on the top of our cabinets in the kitchen!

We hung this in our bathroom  =) 

G-R-I-L-L

Sweet Husband is a resourceful man.  He is also very handsome, sweet, intelligent, and funny.  He has excellent taste in beer and a keen eye for items he can repurpose.  Sweet Husband will graduate next fall with his grad degree as a Family Nurse Practitioner - we are both so excited!  I am so proud of the way he tirelessly serves others through his profession.  I am so blessed by having him as my husband - I love him, very much.   

So the point of all this mushy mushy lovey dovey stuff about my Sweet Husband is to show you another one of his wonderful creations - our new Fire Pit/Grill  =) 

Sweet Husband found the bricks for free at a house the city just demolished a few blocks over.  His dad gave him grill grates and then Sweet Husband stuck some long metal tongs with handles through the grates to hold them together and allow for easy grate removal.  I don't have a pic of the grates, but I will add it when I get one!  The fire pit makes a perfect grill and it makes the food taste exceptional. 

Sweet Daffodils to Sit On

So today I took on my first painting project for a free awesome find!  I found these wood folding chairs outside by the dumpster in Cougar Village.  

That is right - by the dumpster.  

Now lets just kick off our stilettos and get serious - Drop your fear of checking out your neighbors junk.  If you have a fear of picking up awesome things next to...or sometimes inside....a dumpster you are really missing out!  I wasn't sure what to think the first time Sweet Husband pulled out a huge pillar from a dumpster filled with demolition stuff.  This thing was huge, white, and filled with nails.  But my heart skipped a beat after I saw it all cleaned up and painted the most luscious red.  It now stands in our living room forever reminding me of how someone's trash is truly your treasure  =)  

OK so on to these lovely chairs!  I found them by the dumpster and they have been our porch chairs for about a year but I never painted them.  A few weeks ago I was in Aledo, IL, Sweet Husband's hometown, and saw similar chairs painted yellow.  

That was it - I went to Home Depot and hunted down the perfect yellow:  

Dazzling Daffodil.  

This is the Before shot.  One of the chairs was worn down to the wood.  The other chair (on the right) had paint and some lacquer still in tact.  I used some sand paper to lightly rough up the wood/lacquer and also to remove flaking paint.  

Now here is a key product that you need when painting on wood that has lacquer on it (you can also use this for many other surfaces!)  You need:  Glidden Gripper Primer. This primer helps the new paint stick to the wood/lacquer.  If I didn't use this primer the paint would not have 'stuck' well to the chair.  This primer is amazing and I highly recommend it!!!

 

Next Step:  Start Painting!!!!!

Next Step:  Take a break and take a pic of how hard you are working!!!

It took me about a half hour to prime and then a half hour to paint each chair.  

And then they were D-O-N-E

Lovely porch chairs for Sweet Husband and I

Jake's Crate

Sweet Husband and I now have a dog!!!!!!!  Big smiles and squeals!!!!!!!  Our dog's name is Jake and he is the sweetest sweetie ever!  Sweet Husband and I put the dog crate together the other night.  Here is our teamwork =)  

Sweet Husband is super sexy when he is hard at work  =)  

Here is the massive crate  =) 

Project: Storm Windows

 My sweet husband and I spotted two of these storm windows for trash pick up outside a gorgeous home in Edwardsville.  We double checked with the owner that the windows were intended to be 'trash' (although our treasure).  We loaded them up in the truck and headed home! Sweet Husband is going to show me how to clean them up and hinge them together to create a screen  =) 

I will put up a new post when they are done!

Here is the finished project!!!  We have it in the corner by our couch.  I have Christmas decorations on it - cinnamon scented pine cones =)