Beach Decor Blog, Coastal Blog, Coastal Decorating
a beach cottage ~ beach decor, coastal living, vintage style, interior design blog
Hello! Popping in to show you a piece of vintage furniture I have been working on after its first coat…I think it might have been saying please paint me white!
This piece has been with us for more than a few years now…obviously halfway between someone else’s restoration project when I found it for pennies…someone who was with me at the time and is in the furniture business told me it wasn’t even worth those pennies, but I liked it anyway and threw it in the back of the car…
G’day! It’s me. Girl with crochet. Girl with bedspreads. Plus baskets.
So these are a couple of the things I found at the weekend…
This all started at one of the local lifesaving clubs at one of the beaches here…propped outside the door to the lifeguards office, has always been, since I have been here, a hand painted sign on a shabby old white-washed board, with a hand painted ‘lifeguard on duty’ message…every single time I have passed this on one of my walks, I have sort of lusted after it and considered stealing it thinking it would add very nicely thank-you-very-much an authentic piece of Australian beachy decor to this old cottage we call home.
But, obviously that was never an option…one woman walking down the beach with the lifeguard’s shabby old sign under her arm probs wouldn’t have been one of the better moves in life.
Together with that lifeguard lusting and interpret that as you will, there started to appear in all the boutiques around here those ‘inspiration’ signs, I am sure you have seen them too..I still feel the jury is out on whether I like these or not, or whether they are, you know, a bit…coochy-coo…I know a lot of people I know and those trendies abhor them…but me, well I dunno if there is a daily reminder to put a smile on one’s face and enjoy the small things, then I’ll take it…so I have kinda looked at them now and then…wondered if I should part with my cash, then looked at the price tag and thought that definitely not will I be dropping nearly $100 on a sign that is printed to look like whitewashed wood and Made in China.
So recently I came across this in Vinnies…it was sitting on one of the sofas as I walked past on my way to the furniture (the day I found the dresser) and right away it reminded me of the lifeguards sign at the beach.
Mr Beach Cottage, you can only imagine, did nothing but life those busy little eyebrows of his when I presented him with this… I will admit that it did take a tad of imagination to see this as something else…
At this price it hardly breaks the bank though girlfriends…
Here’s how I did it
1. paint the board with white paint (I used water based paint aka emulsion this makes it nice and matt, but any will do)
2. stencil on your letters with pencil (I got my stencil from BigW’s)
3. fill in the lettering with paint or a marker pen
4. rub out the pencil
5. distress and sand down the edges with sandpaper
It won’t be staying here, I just stuck it here to show you, it will be somewhere on the wall where it’s not so close up and obviously it is not as good as if I had swiftly nabbed the real one down at the lifeguards office…but for 3 bucks, a bit of crafting and some white paint…well not bad I don’t think…
See you next time
Love from the beaches
Sarah
I'm Sarah, stylist, photographer & editor at abeachcottage.com. I live in an old white cottage, near the sea in Australia with a battered old deck & a big old fig tree out the back, stripped wooden floors, old sash windows & a jumble of vintage furniture.
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