Give Thanks Sign

Let me be honest, my front porch is so pathetic.  I have never ever decorated it for anything until this fall! The main reason that I haven’t decorated it is because it it pretty unsightly!  You can sort of get a glimpse of it from this picture.  The house is made out of cinder blocks with lime green siding and trim.  The front door is black with lime green glass inserts.  Let me be honest when I say that I cannot wait until we are able to start to remodeling the outside of this house!!

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I had an idea to make this sign and originally I had planned to use it inside.  My plans changed and I ultimately did not need it for my inside decor.  The only place left was the front porch.

After I had trimmed all of the lengths for the boards I used my

Kreg Jig to add pocket holes.  If you are at all into wood working I would strongly suggest looking into getting one of these.  I use mine all the time.

Here is what the corners of my frame looked like after I added the pocket holes and the screws.

You can choose from a variety of different backings to use for this sign.  What I really wanted to use was paneling.  I cannot tell you how many sheets of old paneling I hauled out of this old house when we were remodeling it.  Every. Single. Room was lined with it.

At the time I was not blogging and I was not looking toward the future thinking that one day I might want to use some of it.  I was so focused on getting it out of the house and hauled to the dump.

Saving some didn’t even cross my mind.

Since I really wanted the paneling look but already had a piece of plywood on hand I made a piece of faux paneling.  To do this I took my Dremel and made lines in the wood to make it look like paneling.  After I finished painting it though I could hardly see the lines anymore so I doesn’t really even look like paneling. 🙂

After I had my backing cut to size, I drew on the wood with pencil first to indicate where I wanted to paint the words ‘give thanks.’ I always like to use pencil first because you can erase and start over.

This is what it looked like after I painted it.  You can see that the pant was applied rather thick.  I used some 400 grit sand paper to give it a smooth finish.  I then followed it up with a quick white wash.

To attach the frame to the plywood I used wood glue and a couple of wood screws.

Even though my front porch is pretty pathetic I think this fall sign really does help it to look a least a little bit festive!

Here are a few other fall projects you might be interested in: