Distressed Wood Sign DIY Tutorial

This weekend I painted a distressed wood sign for my home and blog. It will work nicely in my house’s décor because “welcome to the woods” makes sense to welcome guests to our home; our last name is Woods. It will also work nicely to display in the background of my videos because it is, of course, my blog’s name! Here is the step-by-step tutorial for how I made it!

I started with a scrap piece of plywood. This one even had a splotch of bird poop, lucky me!

The first step was to sand this piece of wood all over with a rough sandpaper; I used 60 grit.

After that, I wiped it down with water and a rag. Then I let it dry and applied white paint.

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Since this wood sign will get light use and I am going for a distressed look anyway, I did not feel the need to use a primer. I just slapped some white paint on in streaks. Also, I did not cover the whole piece of wood; I left edges splotchy for a more weathered look.

The next step was the measure out my letters to be sure everything was centered and spaced evenly. Then I used a pencil to sketch an outline of what I wanted to write.

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Instead of paint, I had more control with hand lettering using just a black paint pen. This set of Sharpie brand paint pens is my go-to for hand lettering. You can get them cheaper on Amazon than in the store!

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After the lettering was done, the final step was to distress further. I used the 60 grit sandpaper again to distress areas of the sign between the letters, even over the letters in some circumstances.

I also dipped a rag in espresso stain and colored the areas of exposed wood, wiping off the excess.

Lastly, I installed eye hooks on the sides of the sign for hanging wire in case I want to hang the sign on the wall.

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When the hooks are on the sides, it adds to the rustic feel of the sign and prevents the hardware from protruding into the wall.

This sign matches very well with the other white, weathered sign I have in our living room: my sign displaying our 13 family values made from pallet wood.

I like it displayed leaning on the shelves I recently built.

Now I can use this distressed wood sign to display my blog name during live craft demonstrations on my Facebook page as well as to welcome guests into our home. If you would like to see more of my DIY videos, subscribe to my Youtube channel!

Thanks for reading about my distressed wood sign! I hope you will connect with me on your preferred social media channel or subscribe to my newsletter in the green bar below!

I also wanted to share some images of another cute name sign I used this same distressing technique on.

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