Ohmygosh, could you hear my nail gun and me squealing with delirious glee at 1:45 am last Thursday night? (Or Friday morning, depending on how you view that time I refer to as "the middle of the night".)
I am 100% happy at long last with my dining room wall! (For now anyway. You know how I like to change things up in my house all the time.) It took me three days off and on, working ten or fifteen minutes at a time, (I was busy with etsy orders and my booth space, and had to allow drying time for the paint between coats....) but I finally completed my sign, and it is just what I wanted.
Neutral, kind of understated, and personalized, all at the same time. What do you think?
I began with a twelve dollar board from Home Depot. It was a four foot by four foot board (some sort of thin plywood) and I had the guy cut off one foot. (Which I will craft into another sign to sell in my booth and recoup my twelve bucks and then some...)
I painted it with primer....
I painted it a butter yellow that I had from a tester bottle for my Mom's laundry room way back when. It took a little adjusting to get the color muted just right. (I added white paint)
I then used Annie Sloan dark wax around the edges to weather it a bit. Then, I patted a paper towel of watery white paint over the glaze, and the oil to water mix made it kind of do a weathered looking thing.
After that, I printed, transferred, and painted my words.
We live on Harney Way, which is why the sign reads "The Jewel of Harney Way" at the top.The idea for this line came from a visit to my best friend since fifth grade's home several years back, when she still lived in northern California.
We had taken a walk one morning and we passed a little cottage with a picket fence. On the gate was a bronze oval plate that read "The jewel of such and such street" (I don't remember the street name) and I thought it was precious.
I knew I wanted to steal this idea so I squirreled it away in my mind, but once I put up my own picket fence at our cottage, I was torn, because I already had my little sign that seemed also perfect for my gate to welcome friends. Here is a picture to remind you of it from last summer...
...so, I kept waiting to use the idea. I thought it worked on my dining sign, so here it is.
It's not perfect, and I still might weather the paint a bit more, but I am feeling all sorts of crazy mad love for the wall now. It fills the wall, without being too showy, which is just what I was after.
Now, to decide about the black hutch...
