Distressed Barn Wood Word Art Indoor/Outdoor Home Decor Sign

You don’t have to wait for someone to run down your fence to create fun home decor projects with old distressed and weathered wood! You can create the look of weathered old barn wood using brand new boards! This DIY Word Art sign was made with a combination of ACTUAL weathered wood, new old barn wood using this technique, and scroll saw word art! Come learn how – it’s SO fun and much easier than you might think:

I was so excited when my neighbor passed out on her way home from giving blood and smashed into my fence! I was like OH EM GEE now I can create all the things I’ve been seeing all over the interwebs with distressed weathered wood!

Before you get all judgy – that’s the RV parking area with no sprinklers, so yeah, it’s weedy and ucky. But nobody sees that side of the house except my puppies so issallgood. Well, until now. Also, I really was concerned for the lady and made sure she was okay BEFORE I ran to my Pinterest Boards to scour for all of the pretties I’d saved to make with weathered wood.

What I DID know is that I wanted to add color with some faux weathered wood mixed in with the ACTUAL weathered wood. So I headed to the home improvement store and grabbed me some lumber! Even though I have a saw – I love having the peeps there cut it into more manageable sizes for me to shove in my rig and work with once I get them home. I chose the wood that’s meant to fit together as flooring or paneling because I loved the edge on them and the knots:

You have GOT to getcha some of these Painter’s Pyramids btw:

I got a bagillion of them when my fave sister helped me completely repaint ALL of my kitchen and master bath cabinets. SUCH a time saver – you can paint three sides and then flip the project sooner because they just touch a TEENY TINY point on your project. Srsly, get some of these .

They were having a temporary sale on ALL of the paint samples your little heart could desire – so I obliged.

You need to wait 24 hours for the paint to really dry on there good. Then SAND that sucker to the point of however distressed you want yours to look. A power sander is now on my list of MUST GETS. Because OUCH: My arm. So yeah, I used these sanding blocks/sponges , which worked just fine AND gave me a pass on my normal pilates/yoga mix that day.

Then I used an old sock and slathered on some wood stain {I really liked the way THIS CLASSIC GRAY looked as opposed to a brown stain} ***helpful hint: do not leave the old sock with stain all over it out where one of your puppies can get it and drag it into your family room and roll all over it***

Wipe it off with a dry cloth right after smearing the stain around for a light look. See how it just subtly grabs and sinks into the knots and grain without making it too dark and dirty looking? Personal preference.

With these, I let the stain really soak in more and it made a bigger impact. I wanted a variety to work with.

In this photo – the turquoise/green is the only stained one so you can see how it’s not all that noticeable yet adds interest and makes the boards look used.

While those dried for another day I created my word art with my handy dandy scroll saw (which I should change my status to in a relationship with. LOVE it.) – THIS is the one I have and absolutely adore.

To grab the FREE template / pattern and follow the full tutorial to make the word – CLICK HERE or on the image above.

The next day I cut my colored boards and fence board remnants into 16″ lengths and laid them all out to see how I wanted to arrange the backgrounds. I penciled the measured line and used my scroll saw to cut them {because it was handy} but you could use any ole saw you like.

I grabbed a sheet of 1/8″ plywood and had the super nice employee at Lowe’s cut it into 5ths for me and nailed one to the back of the boards once I had them arranged how I liked them. I tried using some liquid nails and it wasn’t quite holding them all together as securely as I’d liked {probably because of all of the texture and the mix of the fence wood} so just to be sure – I nailed it with these 1″ nails so that they weren’t SO long they poked through the front.

So that they’d be all secure on the wall if someone wanted to hang them up instead of leaning them on a mantel or whatevs, I attached some Keyhole Fasteners :

They’d be pretty hard to attach if you don’t have a handy dandy cordless power drill – so if you don’t, I’d go with THESE easy picture hanging strips as an option:

I went back and forth for my EVER – but then ultimately decided to paint the words white instead of leaving them natural. It was super easy with a quick coat of chalky finish SPRAY paint!

I sprayed such a light coat {and it was 103◦ out} I only had to wait a couple of hours to nail the word onto the front of the boards. I used these 1″ white panel nails so they were short enough to not go clear through and so that I didn’t have to paint them again.

And VOILA! Here’s how my first three turned out: