Home Projects | Recycled and Upcycled

Now with Totally Awesome Distressed Pallet Sign

April 22, 2014
So I posted about my AirStone Fireplace remodel a few days ago.  You can view my before and after pics here, and my work in progress here.  Well, I knew that the fireplace needed something else.  So last weekend I rounded up some old pallets and got to work on a distressed pallet sign to go above the fireplace.  The project was far easier than I expected and it turned out even nicer than I thought it would.  What do you think?
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures during the process so I can’t really give you a tutorial.  But I can give you a few steps I followed…
1. Find an old pallet.  All the wood for this project came from just 1 pallet.
2. Pull the boards off the pallet.   I’m pretty sure this was the hardest part, I made my husband do it.  Some of the boards split or broke during the process.
3. Glue all your stuff together.  I put down 2 boards, about a foot apart and then layer the other ones (what you see in the front) across.  I used a crap-ton of wood glue to adhere them all together.  When it was dry I used some nails to make sure it was all held together.
4. Paint your background color.  I used a dark blue, light blue and lime green.  All of it was paint we had extra of in the garage.  I just went over it and kept mixing the colors on the pallet until it was just the way I liked it.
5. Now here is where it might get tricky for some of you.  I used my Silhouette Cameo to make a stencil for my letters.  You could also free hand it.
6. Paint your letters and when everything is dry sand the crap out of it.  I sanded a bunch and then set it up on my mantel and realized I needed to sand some more because from far away you couldn’t even tell I had sanded it.

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