"A Good Imagination and an Old Board"

Do you like history?

I do! I’ve loved it for almost as long as I can remember. There is something so thrilling in learning about and imagining people’s everyday lives from the past. The fact that we can know something about someone that lived long ago by a journal they wrote, a photo they saved, or a house they left behind is so intriguing! I suppose that’s why I love working with reclaimed wood so much. These old boards I get to use for signs were around in someone else’s lifetime! I love to imagine what part the wood could have had in a person’s history. Was an old board part of a house, a barn, or a store? Was it a fence rail on a family farm or a part of someone’s kitchen wall? It is so fun to look for clues on the wood and try to guess the history it went through by the cracks, rusty nails, paint residue etc.

Recently I worked with this huge board I bought at a salvage place.

If I remember correctly the man that sold it said that it used to be siding on a house. Which would explain all of these layers of paint I found while sanding on one side. Isn’t it neat?! With a good imagination you can almost see the house this was a part of. And all of the different colors it once was… a beautiful blue looks like it may have been the first coat of paint, next an interesting shade of yellowish green?… reminds me of the seventies, then a white-ish cream, rusty red, and lastly what looks like a dark gray.

Rather than sanding all of those layers off, I sealed that side and made that the back of my sign. On the front I painted a white background then hand painted Psalm 118:24 in black lettering. After that I distressed the whole thing which along with the cracks in the board gave it a very rustic look.

The completed sign!

Love this rough edge!

This was definitely one of my favorite reclaimed pieces to work with so far! Do you like to imagine the history behind something? Maybe not an old board… but maybe a necklace? A cookbook? A letter? There is so much history to explore and I love being able to preserve some of it with my signs.

Thanks so much for reading!