Distressing Boards to look like ‘Barn Boards’ {Sawdust and Embryos}

Howdy hey my ATT lovlies! It’s Beth stopping in from Sawdust and Embryos once again! It’s definitely one of the highlights of my month to drop in on you guys and show you what we’ve been up to. HUGE thanks to our girl Brooke for giving me this amazing opportunity! I’m still pinching myself!

If you haven’t had the opportunity, we wanted to welcome you to stop on over to our blog and snoop around for a bit. We get down and dirty with our DIY tutorials, parenting twins, random daily rantings, and our open struggle with infertility (hence the ‘embryos’)!

Sawdust and Embryos Blog

So… today I wanted to show you a little technique that we use to make cheap pine boards look all weathered and barn-board-ish. It’s SO simple, and can be used for so many different projects. Just some more awesome knowledge to tuck under your DIY belt!

We started out with these cheap-o 1×4 pine boards. And by cheap, I mean $1.82 for an 8 FOOT BOARD. Wha? It’s true.

They look so crisp and new… you just WAIT!

 DIY Barn Boards by Sawdust ad Embryos

First I chose some paint colors based on the look I was going for. You can use as many or as few colors as you want, and ANY color combination. That’s the beauty of it. You just can’t go wrong.

DIY Aged & Distressed Barn Boards {Sawdust and Embryos}

Next, I took a dry brush and just lightly brushed paint on here and there, using a different combo of paint for each board. You don’t want to cover it completely. And some boards van have more paint than others. You want to be ‘purposefully random’!

DIY Aged & Distressed Barn Boards {by Sawdust and Embryos}

DIY Aged & Distressed Barn Boards {by Sawdust & Embryos}

After letting that dry overnight, I went at it with some pretty hefty sandpaper (40 grit). This is the fun part by far… and you don’t have to put much elbow grease into it. You want to sand until you can see the woodgrain through the paint. Like SO:

DIY Aged & Distressed Barn Boards {Sawdust & Embryos}

Some boards I sand more than others. I use my spidey-sense to make these decisions.

DIY Aged and Distressed Barn Boards {by Sawdust & Embryos}

You might be tempted to stop there… because they look pretty darn ‘weathered’! But the next step is what REALLY makes them pop. Just trust me on this one!

Wipe your boards free of all the sawdust, and then slap on some stain! We use Minwax Provincial (because it’s our fave rich brown with NO red tint), but you can use whatever you have on hand… although the lighter stains might not look as awesome.

DIY Aged and Distressed Barn Boards {Sawdust & Embryos}

I quickly stained my boards, and then immediately went back and started wiping them off with a cloth, starting with the first one’s I stained.

Ugh… would you look at that grain? Think of all the SWEET things you could do with these!

DIY Aged and Distressed Barn Boards {Sawdust and Embryos}

Can you believe that’s it?  PAINT… SAIND… STAIN… it doesn’t get more simple than that!

DIY Distressed 'Barn Board' Tutorial {by Sawdust and Embryos}

We did several batches of these (with different color combos), and made some barn board ‘signs’ to give away to our loved ones. Here are some examples.

Barn Board Signs {by Sawdust and Embryos Barn Board Signs (by Sawdust and Embryos)
Barn Board Signs (by Sawdust & Embryos) Barn Board Signs {by Sawdust & Embryos)

(Tutorial for painting on the lettering HERE)

There are SO many ideas that I have swimming around in my head for what to use these distressed boards for. Wouldn’t it make for an AMAZING accent wall covered in these boards? Hmmmmmm!

Thanks again to Brooke and her awesome readers (SUCK-UP!) for letting me stop in! Nick and I hope that you’ll have the confidence to give this a whirl! And we desperately hope you’ll email us pictures when you’re done!

Now come on over to our blog and see what else we’re up to!  blank-001

Published on January 19, 2013

21 thoughts on “Distressing Boards to look like ‘Barn Boards’ {Sawdust and Embryos}”

  1. What a pretty project!Weathering and distressing wood are techniques that require a keen eye for observing how it happens in nature.

  2. This post couldn't have come at a better time. Just yesterday I was looking for reclaimed wood to add to the sides of my kitchen cabinets which I plan on painting. I want to give them some rustic appeal but the price for the reclaimed wood was astronomical. Obviously I'm trying to save costs, otherwise I'd be putting in a new kitchen instead of painting my cabinets so I wasn't happy about the cost but would have probably gone that route but for seeing this post! Now I can make my splurge the brass hardware instead:)

  3. Seriously? One of the neatest ideas I’ve seen – Holy Dinah, I’m so excited to try out some of the ideas on your site!! I’ve painted a lot of furniture but I’m always nervous to try new ideas, but this one seems fool proof 😉
    ~Kylie

  4. Thanks so much for this tutorial. I am doing my bathroom wall to look like an old beach boardwalk and couldnt figure out how to make the wood look like a washed out deck.

  5. I love this idea! And that the boards are so cheap! I want to make a photo display out of old barn boards for an anniversary party, but I’m not sure where to find the kind of boards you used. I may have just over read it while reading this post, but where did you find them?

  6. So I am trying to get this look on my already very distressed wooden deck (not currently distressed in a cool way)… I’ll have to send you a pic if it works out! This is such a temporary fix till we rip the thing out, but I can’t look at it another day the way it is! Fingers crossed! LOVE YOUR SITE!

  7. I just tried this for a weathered/industrial tv stand we were trying to make and it turned out awesome! thanks for the great DIY instructions!

  8. The link for the “painting letters” is not working and I would love to see it. Can you help me please?
    Thank you so much!

  9. The link for the lettering painting tutorial will not open, can i have the actual link please? I would love to see if i can make something so pretty.

  10. Those came out nice! I did a similar technique on a fireplace, but used iron acetate to weather some pallet wood, then lightly sanded to bring out the sawmill marks, and finished with a clear coat.

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