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).  

DIY: Dog Bowl Stand.

The year of create kicked off with a little something for Sadie.  She has this habit of nosing her food and water bowls all over the living room, leaving little puddles of water and moistened dog food all over the floor.   I had seen a raised wooden dog bowl stand on Pinterest and asked Matt if he could make one for her.  He said yes and so the project began.  It actually only took a couple of hours to make the stand and then I was in charge of painting it.  I worked with someone on base that has the necessary materials (sent from the States) and she helped me paint, stencil, and distress the stand.  I’m so excited about how it turned out and, even though it took Sadie a few days to get used to it, she now has figured out a way to fling her food from the bowl to the carpet and seems pretty happy with it.  It never ends with that one.   

Here is the final result.

Here is how we built it.  I actually took a bunch of pictures of the process of painting it – but I accidentally erased them from my iPhone before backing it up (ahhh, technology!)  For the paint job we used Annie Sloan chalk paint and started with a layer of white.  We then put on the stencils and applied two layers of red paint.  We distressed it with sand paper and finished up with a wax to protect it from the water that Sadie will inevitably slobber all over it.

Our kitchen butcher block doubled as a work bench.

Before cutting the holes for the bowl, Matt did a few practice runs on a spare piece of wood.

Our helper.

Making sure all those measurements were correct.

Hammertime.

Looking a little apprehensive about this new creation.