Beyond The Picket Fence: Drifting HOME

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Drifting HOME

When I try to think up new titles for my blog posts, I often come up with something that leads me to a topic that has nothing to do with my project. Such is the case when I chose this title, Drifting Home.

It made me think of my oldest, and although he is not drifting back at home at this moment, he has a few times since graduating high school. The late teens, early twenties is a different and at times challenging age to parent.

My son is still in the process of finding himself (aren't we all) and has yet to decide on a career he wants to pursue. This has meant that when he has be in between jobs, he has drifted back home to reevaluate. I am happy it is a safe place for him and that he feels that he can still come home at times. We recently thought he was going to be drifting our way again, but as of now, he is staying put, working it out--life and the hard questions and we are happy for that too.

And, now that we have digressed, let's get on to the "drifting home" project:

I grabbed my box of driftwood today and started playing with it. I decided to spell out something and I figured HOME would be pretty easy. I used wood glue to glue the driftwood on the back board and then the nail gun to secure it.

I joined two reclaimed boards together and painted them with a color I mixed from about 5 others. Here is a paint HINT--if you want to really rough up a piece and remove a lot of paint while sanding DO NOT sand the wood before painting. I wanted this whole piece to look like it has spent time in the water, not just the driftwood so that is what I did--paint and then sand when the paint was dry.

Because I have a hard time making only decor items, I decided to add hooks to make this functional as well. I wanted the hooks to look old too and like they could have spent some time under water. I used iron hooks that rust really easily with salt and vinegar and paint.