Ok, so if you think you are up to the challenge and want to join me on my 'treasure' hunts, just let me know. But I have to warn you, the perfect partner for me is living up north (Heather!), so you have big shoes to fill.
This past week my mother was in town. It's always great having her around. She lives in Oklahoma, so her visits east are few and far between, although now that she has another grandbaby, she's out here a bit more often. This past week she helped me finish (and start) and project I've been wanting to do for a long time.
Call it what you want, but I call it a 'grow ruler.' I saw several ideas on both Pinterest and Etsy, but I ultimately settled on a standard ruler look.
I bought a 6' long 1"x 6" from Lowe's (or HD, I go to both so often, I forget where I get what). I thought about priming it first, but decided to just skip that step and just to see how it turned out without it.
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| just plain old wood |
When JD and I were trying to decided what colors to paint our house, we bought about a million samples (ok, maybe not a million, but we have at least 10 different shades of gray...we skimped and did't get all 50...) My mom and I got out all 10 or so samples and tested the color on extra wood pieces I had laying around. We eventually settled on Proper Gray from Sherwin Williams.
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| No primer needed |
Once the main color was decided on, we then picked out a color for the numbers. I wanted something fun, maybe a bright yellow or aqua color. We tried the yellow but since I didn't have a blue color, we just stuck to plain old black.
And even though I wanted a bright color, we decided that the yellow just didn't stand out enough (crazy, huh?), so we settled on the boring black.....
Now it was time to decided on the size and font of the numbers. I printed out a few different sizes and taped them to the painted board. Bigger is better right? And as in bigger, I mean font size of 300!!!!
I am seriously going to have to invest in a few number stencils. But in the mean time, I had to make do with what I had, which was a printer, plain white paper and an xacto knife. I printed out the numbers 1-6 (because, honestly, do you think JD and I really need a grow ruler for our kids to go over 6'????), and used the knife to trace and cut out the center of the numbers so that I'm left with a paper stencil of sorts.
Before painting the numbers on the board, I had to first figure out where I wanted the numbers. In our house, the master bedroom, Sofie's room, and CJ's nursery are all on the 2nd floor. In the small hallway/landing before the bedrooms is a space just narrow enough to accommodate the ruler.
I knew that I wanted all 6 numbers to be on the board (to make it look more like a ruler). So I had my mom hold the board up against the wall for me and then I measured from the bottom of the floor to the where the 1' mark should be on the ruler. I marked both the wall and the ruler. Once the ruler was marked with the 1' foot mark, I made lines for each foot mark, 1/2' mark, 1/4' mark.
Now time to paint! I didn't have a stencil brush, so I had to improvise again. I ended up using a small foam brush that I had originally bought for Sofie.
My mom had a great idea (thanks!) to use spray adhesive to secure the stencil to the board to keep the paint inside the stencil since we weren't quite sure how the paper would hold it in.
I dabbed the brush into the lid of the paint (to make sure I only got a very small amount of paint) and then started 'stenciling' with the foam brush.
After I had all 6 numbers painted on, I had a few not so good lines that needed cleaning up. I took a sharpie and smoothed out all of the rough edges.
YAY! All done!!! That was done on Saturday. Today is Wednesday. JD and I finally screwed the board into place last night.
The wall where we decided to put the ruler is just drywall, no studs since it is between two door frames. So to make sure the ruler would be a little bit more secure, we opted to use drywall screws. We lined the finished ruler up on the wall with the marks I had made a few days prior. JD did all the screwing and I did all the holding. So, now I can finally say, YAY!! ALL DONE!!!
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| Sofie's room is the door to the left |
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| laundry on the right |
**JD was not available to proof this post, so I apologize for any glaring mistakes.
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