Duffy's - Handpainted Sign for the Bar

I did some tweaking to the outdoor fold-up bar this weekend. Made it a little more personalized if you will.

Tom and his friends have this running joke where either they'll call and ask for "Duffy" or he'll answer the phone, "Duffy's Bar, Duffy speaking". It's been going on for years. So I decided that this was going to be Duffy's Bar.

This is what I came up with for the fold-up cover:

I played around with font styles in Photoshop, and then pasted in a palm tree graphic that I found online (after I copied and flipped it). We made it Bar and Grill because, well, the bar is next to the grill. And I added palm trees since we want the space to have a relaxed feel, and our favourite vacation spots are tropical.

I did try my freezer paper transfer method to get a stencil on the wood that I could then paint over, but the bar is so heavily lacquered that the ink ran right off. So I printed each of the words and the trees individually on 8.5 x 11 paper and set to work cutting it all out by hand with an X-acto knife. I sometimes think about getting a Silhouette machine but I don't really do a lot of lettering, so I've never felt it was worth the money. But after cutting out 15 letters and two trees (plus an apostrophe!) I sure was wishing I had one.

I taped down each word and used a sponge brush to dab the paint onto the wood. One tip: if you're using letters with closed loops (like B's, A's, P's, etc.), leave a little bit of the letter uncut so that the inside of the loop is still attached. You can then paint in the missing part afterwards with an artist's brush.

Also, dabbing the paint on rather than brushing it helps to keep paint from seeping under the paper.

I just kept layering on paint until I got the coverage that I wanted. I used the same paint colour as on the walls in my craft room (which I don't think I've officially posted about).

Once that was dry I hand-painted the detail on the trees with an artist's brush. That was stressful as I am by no means an artist.

The two trees aren't exactly the same since it was done freehand, but I think that gives it a bit of a homey appearance. The letters are also a little rough around the edges but I like that too.

I also added some fine lines to each letter to give them more dimension.

The colour I used for the detail work was the same as the background but with a little black, brown, and yellow acrylic paint added in to darken it.

Here is our finished product. 

I love it. And more importantly, since it was for Tom, he loves it. He can hardly wait for his friends to come over and see the sign. He's not going to tell them, he's just going to let them discover it.

I was going to sand it for an aged look and then lacquer over it, but I've decided to just let it fade on its own.

So, to recap, here is the before:

And here is the after (we lost the flowers in a wind storm):

The bar is now open! 

(Well actually it`s closed, but you know what I mean.)

 

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I'm linking up here this week!

"Future Projects"

Every day I stumble upon other people's fantastic ideas. I bet you do too. Thank goodness for Pinterest, right? Or else our hard drives would be overflowing with strangers' pictures. I have a board on Pinterest called "Future Projects" and I'm proud to say I've actually completed a few of them. I've made a pinecone map ornament, yarn and twine Easter eggs, and most recently the backyard bar.

Here are some of my recent favourites.  

Beachy Photo in a Bottle

I already have several bottles (and photos) in mind.

Craftiments

Upcycled Kleenex Box

Do you think I have a thing for twine?

Southern Flair Crafts

Stones & Leather Bracelet

This looks complicated but the instructions make it seem easy.

Happy Hour Projects

Gardener's wreath

I need to start making more interesting wreaths. 

This one looks simple yet all of the different textures 

keep your eyes busy discovering new features.

Creatively Living

Travel Cases

I'm always replacing mine because the lids break off my eye shadows 

and the powder gets everywhere. 

I'd love to make my own, and I also love the double-sided fabric.

Decor and the Dog

So what's caught your fancy lately?

Do you think you'll ever make your favourites?

Next On the List? Bathroom!

Now that the backyard bar and the seating area are done, we can move on to other things on our list. Though there was a storm today and I came home to find the patio umbrella almost on its side, and cushions all over the place, not to mention I have no idea where the flowers that were on top of the bar went to. They're probably in a neighbour's yard.

This is our "to-do" list. It's pretty long and not much has been crossed off. We started off double-spacing and then had to start filling in those spaces when we realized there was so much we wanted to do.

But having this list keeps us focused, and when we have a couple of free hours we can look at it and find something small to do (or something larger to start on).

We've decided on my bathroom as the next project. It probably could have been put off a bit longer, but then I started some renovations on my own. It's "my bathroom" because that's where I get ready for work in the morning. I shower in the ensuite (dubbed "Tom's bathroom") and then go to my bathroom to finish getting ready.

This is the bathroom decorated by the previous owners. It was their daughters' bathroom so we can't fault them for making it fun and whimsical.

But once the shower curtain was gone it lost its whimsy. I should mention, I really dislike turquoise. Some people adore it - the colour and the stone - but I'm not one of those people. Somehow I've lived with it for 3+ years though. The problem was that I didn't know exactly what colour I wanted. I love the grey tile, but I hate the blue countertop. I didn't want the walls to be a pale colour like white or grey, but since there's no window you can't go too dark either. A conundrum.

I also wanted to replace the medicine cabinet with something made of wood, larger, and that looked a smidge weathered. Probably more than a smidge. I also need a place to hang my "tools", i.e. the hairdryer, flat iron, and two curling irons. Right now they hang on the door knob and it's annoying when you try to close the door.

Then we had a yard sale. I thought it'd be the perfect time to get rid of the white medicine cabinet. So I ripped that sucker off the wall.

Okay, that's an exaggeration, I actually used the cordless screwdriver to remove the screws properly, but I wasn't too concerned about what happened to the wall. Aaaand we were left with this.

Since I now have nowhere to put anything, my bathroom is looking like I live in a dorm. (And to anyone who can't handle the open toilet lid - oh well, too bad for you.)

I should also mention that we had a roof leak last year that did some damage to the ceiling above the shower. Luckily it was just some vent flashing that wasn't attached properly so we didn't have to replace the roof.

We just decided to sand and spackle the area rather than cutting out and replacing the drywall. Since we never use that shower, it should have plenty of time to cure (yes, I will repaint the ceiling).

We're going to replace the welded on towel rack and toilet paper holder so Tom took the pry bar to it.

And now we have this. More spackling.

I've been spackling and sanding the last two days and I think we're just about ready to paint. Oh, I didn't mention the paint! I spent 20 minutes at Home Depot driving Tom crazy trying to decide on a colour. His solution was to take the tile colour and the counter colour to Benjamin Moore and let the lady decide for us like we did last time.

Then we were at Rona (Canada's version of Home Depot) and I found a gallon of oops paint for $10. It's that taupe-y colour that I'm always drawn to. I figure for 10 bucks, why not?

If I don't like it I'll just paint over it.

So here we are, all ready to go. I'm going to paint the ceiling and trim tomorrow night and then hopefully I can get the walls done on Saturday.

Look out list, I'm coming for ya!