Hello, and happy Monday! Hope everyone enjoyed their weekends. In the midst of the kitchen refresh project, I found a free afternoon to spend on a custom wood sign for the dining room. This sign was formerly the “Sweets and Treats” sign that Daniel and I made for our wedding reception over 3 years ago (we had a candy favors table).

 

The sign was cute and I like how it filled some space in the collage in the kitchen, but the fonts were a bit too quirky and dated for my tastes. I decided the sign would look better in gray with simple white lettering in a nice serif font.

I sanded down the piece, not being overly careful to get every bit of paint and lettering off. I liked the worn look of some of the old paint still left in the wood grooves.

 

Since we are still finishing up the kitchen cabinet doors in the garage, I did this project in the dining room and just made sure to cover my work area with newspaper.

 

To paint my board, I used MMS Milk Paint in the color Trophy. I have talked a few times about this paint, and I just love it more and more every time I use it. I had no worries about painting indoors with milk paint, because it is super low odor and cleans up easily with water. No paint fumes, no mess, I’m sold! Also, since you mix up your paint each time you work with it, I never EVER have to worry about it drying up before my next project.

 

 

Here is the wood post-paint. I watered down the paint at a 1:3 ratio of paint to water. I only used a tbsp. of paint powder and had plenty to cover the sign. I added the extra water because I really just wanted a gray stain look, not a totally opaque painted look.

To add the lettering, I found this tutorial on Pinterest. Basically, I just typed my phrase into a text box (in MS Word) and reversed the letters (I used the free font Merriweather). I traced the letters with white chalk and laid them face down on the board and rubbed the chalk into the wood. Jodie used her chalk outline to paint the letters onto her board. I planned to do the same, but I really liked the look of the letters written in chalk, so I filled them in and left them that way. No paint needed.

 

I will need to seal the loose chalk with a matte spray adhesive of some sort, but haven’t picked some up yet.

I ended up putting the sign above the doorway between the dining room and living room. My dream is to own an old farmhouse in the country and remodel it, so I chose the simple word “farmhouse” for this sign as my daily reminder.

 

The Trophy milk paint color is just different enough from the walls to help the sign stand out, but not so much that it doesn’t fit with the rest of the room decor.

You will have to wait and see what happened to the wall in the kitchen where I stole this sign from. Have a great week everyone!