Turning Trash into Treasure

It's not very often people bring me an item that they found in the woods, on a new property that they bought and ask me if there is any way to save it. Normally, everyone wants something new, cheaper and made of some updated material. Every once in a while I get a customer that understands the nature and value of restoring an item and making it your own. 

What is it you ask? A property sign, that my dental hygienist found on her farm in the middle of the woods on the former property lines from when the last owners shared the land in different plots. Her husband and her purchased a few properties together to turn them into one big farm. She was very lucky to have found this item as she was placing markers for the bulldozer crew to clear some more lot out.

What she came across was an old hand carved sign. As she knew about my job and hobbies through dental work conversations she knew I could help her turn this found piece of what most would consider trash into a new property marker for her farm.

This is how the sign arrived to me

There was a ton of work to be done. Here is the first step in my restoration process.

There was a lot of micro damage as you can see here. Sanding and filling took roughly a full days work

Now that the sanding nightmare was out of the way base painting could proceed to take place

This is a 2 sided sign so, I had to flip and repeat.

I really like doing these types of projects so here is progress after day one on side one

Here we skip ahead a little as I was fully focused on this and was not thinking about taking pictures too much

At this point the customer was over joyed, I asked her to give me 3 more days to add my personal touch to it.

She agreed

This job was a lot of fun and paid well but I was still able to refurbish it cheaper than I could have made it for her new. She loved the fact that the original was still there under the new

Thanks for checking out my blog and I hope you enjoyed watching my hobby come to life