DIY: Pallet sign

It has been awhile, so I thought that I would check back in and share a little something that we have been working on lately.  I have seen so many pallet projects on Pinterest and wanted to try one.  The original inspiration for the project was this:

Credit

Of course we kept changing it along with way, but I’m so happy with our final result:

Here is how we got from start to finish. 

Step 1:

Go to a local business and ask if you can purchase a pallet.  They will inevitably give you one for free (tried many times and now have multiple pallets on the side of my house).

Step 2:

Break apart the pallet.  

Step 3:

Sand the pallet slats.  If someone else is sanding for you, make sure that they are hydrated and happy.

Step 4:

Stain the pallet slats.  We chose to go with a grayish stain because it matched our bedroom furniture.  We applied three coats of stain.

Step 5: 

After the stain has dried, put the pieces together.  Matt figured out how to do this with extra wood that we had around the house.  We decided to only put three pieces together because it was super heavy and would either break a hole in our wall or be the death of us during an earthquake (of which we have many).

Step 6:

I printed out the letters on my Cricut and Matt traced them on the wood.  He is way better at measuring than me.  I'm more of an eyeballer, which really wouldn't work with this project.

Step 7:

Since we had an outline of each letter, we taped the stencil back in place and painted.

Step 8:

Let it dry.

Step 9:

Hang and admire.

It is far from perfect, but as we like to say, it is perfect for us (messy letters, chipped wood, and all).