Today it’s time for another DIY challenge. I haven’t done one of these in a few months so I was re-energized with this one. For this month’s challenge it was my turn to pick the item. As I mentioned in Friday’s post I picked chain. With that in mind, I created this Rustic House Number Sign.
I’ve been wanted a house number sign or plaque out front for years, but I was never able to find one that was a little rustic. To make this, I used wood from an old whiskey barrel planter that fell apart last summer.
I had already upcycled the handles from that planter into door knobs. I never threw out the wood, because it was so perfectly weathered I knew I’d think of a way to use it elsewhere.
I used my mitre box to cut the wood pieces into 5 equal lengths. Then I cut two more pieces as backing.
I placed the two extra pieces horizontally across the back and nailed into place. I used 5 nails across the top to secure each piece of wood, on the bottom I used only two to secure the ends. I moved the bottom piece up a bit because the wood was so weathered on the bottom that it was brittle. I then set my house numbers on top to get an idea what it would look like.
I thought it needed a little something more and I remember that I had also kept the metal that originally wrapped all the way around the whiskey barrel. I wanted to use that too, so I very carefully cut two pieces to the width of my sign. I actually wore leather gloves when cutting this because the metal edges are sharp. I used industrial scissors to make the cuts. I screwed it onto my sign using the existing screws that originally held it to the planter.
Attaching the chain was a little more challenging. I had picked up screws with little loops on it to attach to the top. I was unable to use that because it would require me to bend metal to get the chain into the loop. I ended up using staples from a staple gun. I looped the staple through the chain first.
And then I hammered it into the sign with a rubber mallet. This was probably the most difficult part of the whole project.
Lastly, I hammered in my house numbers to the sign using the nails that the numbers came with.
Luckily I did this project a few weeks ago when I was able to get outside and take pictures. This weekend was below zero degrees here.
Be sure to see what creative ideas my friends came up with using chain!
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