wood burning

Well, not really. I just thought that would be an awesome title. And it’s almost like the famous “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning”, but way less dangerous than Napalm. Anyhow, after last weeks project of adding some flair to my front door, I have been eyeballing the rest of my front porch. And then I remembered that the previous tenants of this house had a wooden sign hanging over the entryway to the front porch. I’m assuming it’s wooden, just because that’s what I picture. But there is proof that something was hanging there, because they left the hooks in the porch ceiling when they left. So by now you can probably guess that I had to make myself my very own sign to hang on my porch.

Luckily the two hooks on the front porch weren’t the only thing the previous tenants left; they also left some scrap wood in the backyard. I went out and found a piece that looked like it was in good shape, and also was going to fit in the space where I wanted it.

Cleaned piece of leftover deck wood.

After finding a good piece and cleaning all of the uck from outside off of it, I took a permanent marker and wrote what I wanted to say on it so I would have something to follow along with the wood burner. I do not trust myself to free hand anything the first time, mainly because I never think it looks good enough.

“Welcome” written on the board

I decided to go with welcome, rather than the whole last name thing, mainly because I already have our name on the lighthouse that sits on our porch. After writing “Welcome” on the board, I took my wood burner and traced along my stencil.

Wood burner with tip

It takes a bit of time to wood burn, so make sure you have some free time. I think it took me about an hour to get my sign to come out how I wanted. I have also noticed if you burn wood that has a smoother finish and wood grain to it, your burning looks much smoother. I had a hard time staying true to the stencil because the wood burner would want to follow along with the wood grain, whether I wanted it to or not.

Finished burning.

I sat at my counter and burned this without having any windows open and the smell or smoke didn’t bother me at all, but if you have a smoke allergy or strong smells set you off, crack a window. After I was finished burning, I needed to figure out a way to hang it. Once again, since I do things on the fly, I didn’t have any hooks to put into the wood at the house, so I just used two nails. I figured out the distance that the “hooks” needed to be by measuring the hooks on the porch. Then I nailed in two nails into the top of the board and took a pair of needle nose pliers and bent them into hooks.

All hung up

Here is my new and free welcome sign all hung up. Looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself. And here is a view from the beginning of our garage with both my new sign and my new wreath.