Fence Board Sign

While changing around the functions of our living room and bonus room a couple of months ago, we took our flat screen TV off the wall downstairs and set it on the console table upstairs. This left us with the big, ugly, black bracket still smack in the middle of the wall downstairs.

Lovely, no?

Instead of taking it down like any normal person would do, I decided I'd rather just cover it up. So I pulled out a few scrap fence boards and a length of 1x2 that I had in the garage and started cutting, sanding, and screwing them together to make a big sign.



I added a few upholstery tacks just for some interest.

A couple of eye screws and some heavy duty wire on the back...

... and I've got a nice little hanger for my new sign.



The wood got beaten a little with a hammer and other tools to dent the boards, then I primed and painted it with Heirloom White and sanded it to distress the paint.

There are so many options for how you could paint your sign and what it could say. Some ideas I considered were:
~ an inspirational quote or word
~ a scripture
~ a line of a song
~ my family's last name and our anniversary date

Once I decided on what the sign would say, I printed out the words (backwards!) in the size I wanted, then arranged the words and fixed them in place with painter's tape.

(As you can see, I ended up changing my mind about the font I wanted.) Using the method outlined in this tutorial, I transferred the letters from my printed paper onto the wood.

I've learned after doing this a few times that the best results are achieved when you've painted your surface with regular old craft acrylic paint. House paint with any kind of sheen and even spray paint tend to repel the ink, so your finished words are very, very light. Because I'd used spray paint on the sign, my transferred letters were visible but too light to read well, so I had to go back over my lettering with some watered down acrylic paint to make them readable, but not too bold.

And here it is in its place of honor.
The finishing touch was to wipe some brown glaze onto the edges and along the seams where the boards meet, just to make it look more worn and aged.


Talk about an easy, inexpensive way to add some personal, unique and high-impact art to a wall.

Even though this project was experimental, I'm actually pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Bye-bye, ugly black bracket thing.