DIY Big Wooden Letters

Happy Friday, my friends! We've been making a lot of progress on decorating our new home this week, so it's only appropriate that I share this home decor DIY with you today. These letters are a very special piece of decor for us, because we originally made them for our wedding last summer. They are the perfect reminder of our perfect day.

Photo by Kerli Halliste

From the early planning stages, I knew I wanted to do our names in wooden letters as a decor element in our wedding, and they had to be golden of course. What I didn't consider, was the fact that we'd be hanging them on wood plank wall. Which is what color? And golden is basically what color? So you can imagine how that looked. You could hardly spot the letters on the wall when we hung them a couple days before the wedding. Yes, I was a "little" frustrated.

We had two options: we could either take them down and repaint them in a different color (probably navy) or paint a white boarder on them to make them stand out against the beige wall. We opted for the latter, since neither of us could really imagine navy blue letters on that wall. I spent the next 3 hours painting the letters with some left-over white paint and a random brush we could find. Did I mention this was late at night, just a little over 24 hours before the big day. But, alas, we made it and the letters looked half-decent, so I was fine with it. Until...

 ...moving to Germany. I knew I wanted to take our initials and the ampersand with me. After all, we'd put so much effort into these letters, and I loved them. And, I really wanted to have something in our new home that reminded us of our wedding day. So, I sanded the paint down, and repainted the letters back to golden. Ahh...sigh of relief. Much better this way.

Here's what you need:

• Printed letter posters
• X-acto knife or scissors
• Pencil
• Plywood
• Jigsaw
• A chisel and hammer
• Sanding paper
• Spray paint

1. The first thing you need to do, is make some letter posters. I created mine using Photoshop. Basically, created a new file the size of a A2 paper and then fitted the capital letters on that. Once I knew the size of the capital letters, I created a new file for each letter making sure they were all the same size. You could alternatively do this in Word and let the printer print it out on an A2 size.

The most difficult task at this point was choosing a font. Oh boy, me and fonts...

Order the cheapest prints of all the letters. The quality isn't all that important here.

 2. Next, cut out all the letters and trace them onto the plywood with pencil.

 3. Cut out all the letters with the jigsaw. Rein used a chisel and a hammer to punch a hole for the saw to go through inside the letters. After cutting, sand the edges with a fine sanding paper.
4. Finally, spray-paint the letters in your desired color. Do as many coats as needed for full coverage. Let dry. Hang on your wall or wherever you'd like. Enjoy!

These letters are my favorite part of the decor in our apartment. I'm not sure these will stay where they are right now, but I would love them anywhere. I can't wait for this apartment to be done, but I know we still have a long way to go.

What kind of decor projects are you working on?

xo. Hanna