Where You Live

I decided out of the blue to make my sister a new house number. These plastic numbers that come screwed to your house can yellow with time, and get real brittle. Plus they aren’t pretty.

I bought some wood numbers from a craft store for .50 cents each, and used a scrap piece of pine I had left over from a headboard I made. (Hey, that’s an easy project to share)

First, I didn’t care for the little tails on the 5 and 6, so I drew a pencil line where I wanted to trim them down, and I cut them off with a jig saw. (I hope you can see my pencil lines.)

Then I laid them on my piece of scrap pine and decided how wide the piece needed to be. I cut it to width and sanded the top edge so it was a little rounded. Then I stained everything walnut. (I never use the stain/varnish combination. It’s terrible.)

I purchased a bamboo blind for another project a couple months ago, and I saved all my scraps of bamboo. Using an old pair of large tin-snips, I cut the strips of bamboo to fit on top of my pine. I cut them shorter, so the walnut stain would show around the edges.

I set them out, looking at spacing and decided where to put them. I used my bargain E-6000 from Hobby Lobby (.99 cents) to attach each strip of bamboo.

Now, this is where it got just a little tricky. DH suggested I use wood glue to attach my bamboo, but I know how unreliable wood glue can be, especially when this house number is going outside, it’s likely crack and loose hold after a year or two. So I didn’t go with the quick drying wood glue. I decided on slow drying E-6000. This meant that my bamboo, which is slightly imperfect when it comes to ‘flatness’ had to some how be held in place while it dried. I got out every clamp I had (thanks to a yardsale) and spread them around and let it sit like this all day.

Then I put E-6000 on the backs of my letters, set them in place, and put a piece of newspaper over them with a chocolate weight of Cadbury Mini Eggs. :)

When this was dry, I sprayed it multiple times with a satin varnish. The can said indoor and outdoor, so I used it. I didn't want to try and brush a liquid into the groves. Plus it might puddle between the bamboo, and not look nice.

Then, with the old house numbers removed, I held a piece of paper up to the bricks and pushed a pencil through the paper where the holes in the bricks were. I then used this paper template to determine where the holes should be drilled into the house numbers. I figured dark screws would blend in better with the numbers than it would through the bamboo, plus I wasn’t sure how the bamboo was going to be to drill through. I couldn’t have it splitting now!

Two places from the old numbers lined up with the new numbers, and that was all I really needed to get the sign to hold.

Honestly, the hardest part of this project was needing patience for the glue to dry so I could move onto the next step!!!

And yes, Sister loves it!