-Products for this project provided by DecoArt. This post contains affiliate links-
There is not much time left before the weather starts to cool and summer is over. Fall is my favorite time of year so I am not sad about that, but I had an outdoor project that I had been wanting to do for a while and I wanted to make sure I got it done before it started getting to cold. We have lived in our house for over 7 years and when we first bought the house we said that one of the first things we wanted to do was paint the doors. They were a kind of sagey green color and they weren't very well painted because you could see a brighter teal color coming through in some areas. I didn't love the color and we figured painting them would be an easy fix and a lot less expensive than replacing the doors.
Now 7 years later we still had never done it and we decided it was finally time. Our house is an orange-ish colored brick and our original plan had been to paint the door a dark red color. As we were looking at DecoArt's Curb Appeal paint colors we decided we wanted to do something a little more different. We thought maybe blue would go well with the orange undertones in the brick since orange and blue are complimentary colors. I was kind of leaning toward a navy but my husband really wanted a brighter blue, TARDIS blue is what he called it, the actual color is called Hampton Blue. I ended up deciding to go with the brighter blue that he had picked because I really did want to do something a little more out of my comfort zone. I will admit that the first swipe of paint I wondered what in the world we were thinking, it was definitly brighter than I would normally go with, but once it was done it grew on me more.
The other thing that I wanted to do was make a new address sign. We had wooden numbers screwed into the brick. A couple of the numbers were breaking and others were twisting and not staying in place. The 7 was broken and twisted in a way that made it look more like a 1 than a 7. It really needed to be replaced. I ordered some paint and stain from DecoArt to make myself a new address sign to go along with the new door color. I picked up a wooden board at Walmart and used my Cricut to make a stencil with our name, house number, and a design along the bottom.
How to Make a Stenciled Address Sign
You will need:
- DecoArt Americana Decor Color Stain in desired color (I used Ash Grey)
- DecoArt Paints in desired colors (I used Curb Appeal Hampton Blue and Crafters Acrylic White)
- Unfinished Wood Sign 12"x 16"
- Foam Paintbrushes
- Paper Towels or Rags
- Cricut Explore or other cutting machine
- Stencil Vinyl
- Transfer Tape
- Clear Top Coat
- Exterior Mounting Tape (or another way to hang your finished sign)
Additional items you will need to paint your door:
- DecoArt Curb Appeal Paint in desired color (I used Hampton Blue but they have lots of great colors to choose from)
- Paintbrush
- Small Roller and Tray
- Painters Tape
- Drop Cloth
Instructions:
To make the sign you will need to create your design in Cricut Design Space or the software you use for your cutting machine. To make this easier I first made a rectangle the size of my board, that way I could lay everything out and know how it was going to fit in the space I had. I added my house number in large numbers in the center of the board. Above that I typed our family name, and below I made a border design. If you don't want to put your family name on the sign you could put the border both above and below the number or just shift them so that there is not an empty space above your number. Another option would be to put the street name below the number instead of the border. I wanted a geometric border so I went with an arrow type design and repeated it to create the border.
After I had my design created I started prepping my board. I ordered a few different colors of stain (both Color Stain and Vintage Effect Wash) and tried them out on the back of my board to see which one I like the best. I tested Color Stain in Ash Grey and Chocolate and Vintage Effect Wash in Brown, I decided on Ash Grey for this sign but have a project in the works with the Vintage Effect Wash that I will share soon.
I painted my board with the Color Stain a little at a time and after I painted a section I wiped it with a paper towel. I wanted a thin layer so that I could see the grain of the wood through the paint. Once I was happy with the coverage I set my board aside to dry.
Next, I cut out my stencil and weeded it by removing the numbers and letters that I wanted to paint. I used transfer tape to apply the stencil to my board.
Once you have the stencil on the board you are ready to paint. Make sure that the stencil is stuck down really well. Carefully stencil on the words, numbers, and designs. My board was pretty rough and had some deep groves in it so I couldn't get my stencil stuck down as well as I would have liked but I was able to touch up any bleeding I had afterwards.
I let it dry a little bit but not all the way before I pulled up my stencil. Then like I said, I touched up some areas that bled. I wasn't sure if the stain would cover the bleeding but it did. then we hung the sign on our house. Since we have a brick exterior I researched different ways to attatch things to brick and ended up deciding to go with a heavy duty exterior mounting tape, it seemed to have good reviews and I thought it would be the easiest way. So far it seems to have held really well. There were some comments about it not holding in cold weather so I guess we will have to see how our sign lasts through the winter, but so far so good.
I am really happy with the way our new address sign turned out. To finish the front of the house makeover we painted the front door (and the back door but I didn't take any pictures of that). I really didn't want to have to take the doors off so we just opened the door partway, put a cheap plastic dropcloth underneath and painted it. I first taped off the door knobs and lock and then painted around those with a paintbrush. Then I used a small roller to paint the rest of the door. The paint dried pretty fast so we didn't have to leave our doors open for a super long time. We were able to do two coats on both the front door and back door with one jar of paint.
It was a pretty quick and easy, and inexpensive way to really change things up and sometimes a change like that is kind of fun.
I let it dry a little bit but not all the way before I pulled up my stencil. Then like I said, I touched up some areas that bled. I wasn't sure if the stain would cover the bleeding but it did. then we hung the sign on our house. Since we have a brick exterior I researched different ways to attatch things to brick and ended up deciding to go with a heavy duty exterior mounting tape, it seemed to have good reviews and I thought it would be the easiest way. So far it seems to have held really well. There were some comments about it not holding in cold weather so I guess we will have to see how our sign lasts through the winter, but so far so good.
I am really happy with the way our new address sign turned out. To finish the front of the house makeover we painted the front door (and the back door but I didn't take any pictures of that). I really didn't want to have to take the doors off so we just opened the door partway, put a cheap plastic dropcloth underneath and painted it. I first taped off the door knobs and lock and then painted around those with a paintbrush. Then I used a small roller to paint the rest of the door. The paint dried pretty fast so we didn't have to leave our doors open for a super long time. We were able to do two coats on both the front door and back door with one jar of paint.
It was a pretty quick and easy, and inexpensive way to really change things up and sometimes a change like that is kind of fun.
Some of the supplies I used...
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