Old Barn Wood Projects
- Use your old barn wood for various projects.Barn Wood Background image by ryasick from Fotolia.com
Reclaiming old barn wood is good for the environment and perfect for home décor. The wood has history, lots of character and lasts forever. It makes attractive accent pieces and can become useful furniture or wide-planked flooring, picture frames or interior shutters. Barn wood looks right at home inside the house. - Wall or door decorations and outdoor pool signs look authentic and antique when painted on barn wood. Decorate barn wood boards to announce farm food or early 20th century commercial products for sale, identify the owner of a room or give a "Keep Out" warning. Pool signs can point to the bath house or remind kids of pool etiquette, such as "no dunking." To make an "old" sign, cut a stencil or just copy old-fashioned typeface. Use hobby paints in faded colors that mimic rural country-store paint colors. For an even more interesting effect, paint the words in a deep color. When dry, coat the painted words with crackle glaze and repaint the letters in a lighter color while the crackle glaze is still tacky. As the glaze dries, the top coat forms cracks like old, flaking paint that reveal the color underneath. Use bent wire or a picture hook on the back to hang the sign.
- If you are a carpenter, making a pie safe is a simple way to build a conversation piece that earns its keep. If you can't hammer a nail straight, a woodworking shop can make it for you fairly inexpensively using your barn wood. Measure a space in the kitchen or pantry with room for a shallow cabinet with shelves. Order punched tin panels for the doors online. You can also order wooden ball feet on line and paint them, or use barn wood scraps for the base. The pie safe has a flat top of sanded barn wood with a slight front and side overhang. Make the back flush so it fits snugly against a wall. Two hinged frame doors in front hold the punched tin panels and two, three or more adjustable shelves inside store cans and jars of food, cookbooks, table linens and dishtowels or kitchenware. Hunt for some rusty iron latches to use as doorknobs or find faux vintage knobs in a hardware store or flea market.
- A couple of old oxidized decorative iron braces and a length of barn wood, sanded and varnished or lacquered is all you need to give a kitchen character. Mount the braces using a carpenter's level at even intervals on the wall for your breakfast bar. Figure out the height based on whether you will use chairs or bar stools for seating. Set the slab of finished barn wood on the braces, and attach it securely to the braces on the underside with screws. Set an old glass mason jar with a few wildflowers on your breakfast bar, and it's finished. Paint unfinished wood bar stools in heritage barn colors and tuck them under the counter.
