No, I haven’t picked another One Little Word, but this could be a good project for that.

No, a long time ago, Husband and I were at a local flea market and saw some really cool signs made out of old wood and letters. They had words like BELIEVE, PEACE, and LOVE on them. There was one with SAVOR on it, but it was in colors neither of us liked (which is unusual – we almost NEVER agree on decorative things), so we decided to make our own.

I found a piece of wood that is supposed to be used for a shelf at the home store, and I think the letters came from Michaels. I used some leftover orange paint from the kitchen (New Penny was the name, I think it’s from Behr, but I can’t find it) and some brown spray paint for the letters. It was cute.

And lately, it’s been the source of good dinner conversation. The Boy is into spelling everything he sees – not reading, just identifying letters. So every night for weeks, he would say, “What does S-A-V-O-R spell? What does R-O-V-A-S spell? Is ROVAS backwards for SAVOR? Is ‘rovas’ a Spanish word? It SOUNDS like Spanish.” Then it became our reminder to him to chew slowly. “Am I savoring my food?” And if he ate too quickly, “I’m rovasing my food tonight. I’m ready for dessert.” Husband and I often exchange glances over the dining table that mean, “Who IS this kid?” He is such a crack up!

So as more attention has been paid to the sign on a daily basis, the more I realized I don’t like sign as much anymore. I am in a phase where I want everything to be painted white. January does that to me. I want things to be fresher, look cleaner. And this from a girl who LOVES color and painted her bedroom lime green.

So this seemed like a great “purposeful” project – making the things in your house the way you actually want them, not just being okay with how you used to like them. So during naptime yesterday morning, I wanted to take a look at the sign to see how best to repaint it. I reached up to take the sign off the wall, and this happened:

The letters just fell off. I guess I had only used wood glue to secure them before – I don’t even really remember doing this project the first time.

Fun – I see lots of sanding work in my future.

Once I sanded everything, I used some flat white paint I had in the garage (the same I used for this project) to start a base coat.

I did three coats on each piece, lightly sanding in between. I wanted it to look a little rustic, so I let some of the brown paint of the letters show through, but I completely covered all the orange on the base.

I was afraid my wood gluing skills weren’t up to par, so, once everything was dry, I found some small nails to attach the letters to the board. (Nice shoe photo bomb. What, you don’t wear leopard ballet flats when you do hammering projects?)

This actually went much faster than I thought it would. But it was LOUD.

So I found some ear plugs to help. I’m not a wuss. The houses in our neighborhood are REALLY close together, so the sound bouncing back and forth off the walls was intense. Seriously.

Apparently my hammering enthusiasm increased when each strike was no longer deafening me, so I cracked letter O a little. I’m okay with it.

I wanted rustic, right?

Done. Yay!

The simplest things make me so happy. Now I won’t be bugged by it the hundred times I see it every day.

Do you decorate with words? This is the 2nd project with words I’ve done this month, so obviously I do. I’d love to hear what words you have in your home.

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This post is part of a 31 Day series about improving my days by being more PURPOSEFUL.

You can read more about it here. You can find all the posts in this series here.