Sentimental Wood Art - DIY

This year my husband and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary.  I wanted to make him something special instead of buying him something, because I don't know if all husbands are difficult to buy for, but mine is for sure!  Also, when I sat back and thought about it...holy smokes, we've been married for five years already!  Time flies when you're having a good time, right hunny?  I started thinking about our wedding day and how important it was to both of us - the promises we made to each other.  I wanted to resurface those promises...dust them off and display them in a beautiful way that we both would appreciate and be able to look upon whenever and more often.  Because surely there are times when we should step back from the chaos of life and remind ourselves of what is important.

So, I wandered over to my favorite scrap pile/junk yard/building materials thrift store and found a cool looking piece of reclaimed Mississippi Pecan wood.  They often have some cool reclaimed wood there that are on consignment from a local wood shop.  It's not always cheap...beautiful wood usually isn't.  But I needed a pretty small piece, so mine was $35.  And I CANNOT believe I forgot to take a picture of the piece of wood before I started working on it!!  It was pretty, but nothing like it turned out to look after I worked on it for hours!  I could tell that the wood had a beautiful color to it, but there was some mold or mildew or something gross and weird that wood gets probably when exposed to water.  The guy at the counter told me that it will just "sand out"....mmmhmmm...so, that is easier said than done!

After I bought the piece of wood, I went out and bought a palm sander.  It was an awesome birthday present from my favorite mother-in-law!  xoxo.  Then when I put my son down for a nap one afternoon, I scooted outside to just "sand it out".  2 hours later, in the same position, moving that sander back and forth, back and forth, with the grain of the wood...I could still see the mildew.  So, since I felt crippled and was super hot by that point, and my son doesn't nap for nearly enough hours in the afternoon ;), I took a break and continued to sand all that yuckiness out another day.  My new sander sure got a workout!  So did I!

After the sanding, I stained it using a Minwax natural stain.  I didn't want to change anything about how beautiful the wood naturally looked.  This stain basically, enhanced the wood's natural beauty.  Kind of like what mascara does for me every morning!  After the staining process (I gave it two coats), I moved on to three coats of a Minwax semi-gloss polyurethane.  What a high maintenance chunk of wood!  Did you know that you have to sand between each coat of polyurethane?!  I didn't.  Once it was finished, it was gorgeous though.

Here's a shot of my new work space...yeah, a garage one day would be nice.  :)

 

The last step was to cut out the wording that I used from our wedding vows in white vinyl and apply them to the wood.  This step sounds easy peasy, but it was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be!  The vinyl letters were giving me trouble and I ended up having to buy a new blade, and running out of vinyl...then since I was laying the words down on the wood one by one, due to the length of the wood, I had to make sure each word was placed as straight as possible on the wood, without sticking it down first.  Tricky.

So, here it is, "ta da!"

And I had no idea that the suggested gift for year five of marriage is wood!  BONUS!!  I get diamonds, he gets wood.  Sounds appropriate.  ;)

Yes, it was a week late, but it's kind of pretty, hey?  And it means a lot to both of us.
Love you hunny! xoxo

Little Boy Nautical Bathroom

Let me start by saying that I love my son's bathroom.  It has a beautiful cast iron claw foot tub, awesome wainscoting, it's small but big on character in my opinion.  It even has a sky light!  A person could decorate this bathroom many different ways, but since we mainly use it to bathe my son and brush his teeth, I figured I would make it a little bit more fun for him!  I had a great time decorating this bathroom because it allowed me to work on many little projects.

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

Way more fun!

DIY Painted Oar

No nautical bathroom is complete without an oar, right?  Right.  That is exactly what I told my husband when we were on vacation in Florida this year, and I found this baby in a pretty awesome antique store that I dragged my husband into.  It was only $22 and the perfect size, so I had to have it.    I had seen oars on the Pottery Barn Kids website for $39, so this was a better deal.  And more fun.

Of course, my husband tried to convince me otherwise, saying that it wouldn't fit into our suitcase, and questioning how I was going to get it home..."it will fit!", I told him.  It didn't fit.  But I didn't stress about it.  I figured it was small enough that I could put it into our carry on bag and just have the handle stick out, no biggie.  Apparently, the security people at the airports might think it is a bit more of a big deal, however.  They took it from me, asked a few people and after what felt like forever, handed it back to me and said "I guess it's okay".  I don't know if they were concerned about its size or if they thought that it could be used as a weapon...which makes me chuckle a little thinking about a mom with a baby in a stroller using a small wooden oar as a weapon.  Right...

Anyway, the oar made it home!  I primed it.  Taped it off and painted it.  And it looks marvelous hunny!  

xo

Before:

After: