"Country" Sign Upcycle

When we were married, many years ago, I couldn't wait to get to the County Fair that year and buy a name sign.  I had admired them for years and had these great dreams of adding names to it as we had children.  Well, I lost some of the romanticism of the idea when we had been married for 12 years and still had no children. :(  It lost a lot more since over the years, my decorating style has changed about a million times and the "country sign" from the mid 90's was old and outdated.  It has spent the last few years sitting on our patio, being rained on and basically forgotten about.  But, for some reason this week it caught my eye and I had the desire to Upcycle it.

This is how it looked after years of waiting to be rediscovered.

First, I cleaned it up a bit, and painted the inside of the writing.

Next, I painted the "burnt look" grooves off white.

Finally, I watered down some white paint and washed the front.  I tried to be careful, but I had to retouch most of the letters as I got white on the edges.

I added it to my Beach themed bedroom.

Please excuse the brown ribbon.  I have plans to get some rope to hang it so it will look a little more "beachy".  To my surprise, my hubby was really excited about it.  I didn't realize that he had an emotional attachment to the sign too. 

 I guess because it's the name that he got to share with me and our beautiful daughter, who we finally met on year 13.   (She was soooo worth the wait.)