My husband and I purchased our first home at the end of 2012, and while it was really exciting, we could only afford a 80's fixer-upper on our budget. But it didn't matter! Its ours, and I love it. Slowly but surely, we have been gutting the entire house and upgrading it, which in itself has taught me so much that I never ever thought I'd need to know (how to install a wood laminate floor, or scrape up two layers of linoleum, anyone?). I've been living in a state of semi-construction for over a year now, but I've gotten used to seeing doorways with no frames and a lack of baseboard in our bedroom. Here's some before and after pictures of our kitchen and dining room! Everything (except the countertops) we did ourselves!
The kids are finally getting to the age where I can do small projects during the day, and they sure sleep hard enough at night where I can make all kinds of noise building things without them waking. My husband removed the hall bath last week before we had our new one installed without a single kid waking to his clanging.
With the girl's birthday party coming up, and company coming over, I want to get a big jump on our progress. So, I figured it was about time to finish painting our doors. I finished up all the bedrooms and the guest bath, then came to this guy.
That's our laundry room door before!
I gave him his gray paint, and it was a vast improvement, but I still felt like I needed something else on this door to make a little bit of a statement. Our laundry room is right off the kitchen, so guests can see the door when they visit. And while I didn't want anything too eye catching, it still needed a bit of shabby chic. So I decided to stencil "Laundry" on the door! I used my Silhouette Portrait to make the stencil.
I chose my font, enlarged it to the correct size I wanted, and then used the eraser to make sure any inner circles that would have otherwise been cut out would still be connected onto the background. This way, I'd have a good stencil, instead of free handing it. If you want to free hand it, more power to you! You can also purchase stencils online or at hobby stores.
The cut settings are pretty important for a good stencil. You'll want to make the speed low as possible if it is an intricate design, and usually I select double cut as well. However, this was a brand new blade and I knew it wouldn't need it, so I opted out this time.
After cutting with my Silhouette, I took out the inner letters and voila! Stencil!
I enlisted the help of my husband for this project. He helped me make sure the stencil was centered and straight as I taped it onto the door (with painters tape so I didn't ruin the new paint job!). After this, it's pretty simple. I chose to use acrylic paint for the letters. It's a pretty easy cleanup, and if I messed up it would be easy enough to scrub it off and paint over the area again.
I put on one coat of acrylic and then removed the stencil. I was going for the outline of the letters more than neatness. White on a dark gray door definitely takes more than one coat of paint. After removing the stencil I was left with this!:
You can see where the letters still have missing portions where I had to erase in my Silhouette program to keep the inner circles of the letters. Easy enough to fix by free handing a teeny bit. And after another coat (or two) of paint, and filling in those gaps, I was done!
I'm really happy with the end result! I don't think I'll doing this to any other door, because who really needs every door to their house labeled? However, it's the little cute charms in a house that make it your own, don't you think!
Next post I will be putting up a new free plush pattern, so stay tuned!
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