When life gives you DIY lemons. . .

. . . you make DIY lemonade, of course.

My latest project was an impromptu one. I was doing some shopping with birthday coupons from various merchants, when I spied this little beauty.

You've seen these. The in-store version of those vinyl letters that everyone's using. There are several online sources for these. I've been wanting to try them out, but have never gotten around to ordering any. And most of the ones I've seen in stores feature sayings that I wouldn't really want on any of my walls.

This one, though, was something I wanted: just the word "welcome." I'd been wanting to put one of these on the door from the garage into the house. I'd never expected to find this product in a store, but there it was--on clearance! Marked down to $5.49. And then I had my birthday coupon for an additional 15% off. $4.67 out of my pocket, and the vinyl lettering went home with me. I have to admit that I was feeling pretty smug.

You'd think that this product was designed specifically for a door, wouldn't you? Especially since there's a photo of a door on the front of the package. When I got home and took my vinyl letters out of the package, though, I discovered that the size of the image was about 39 inches wide. And the door is about 31 inches wide. My feeling of smugness vanished, let me tell you. Now my door had an inferiority complex, and I had a worthless package of absurdly large vinyl letters. Lemons.

Or so I thought, for a moment. Until I realized that I could do something else with those letters. I cut a piece of 1 x 10 lumber a little larger than the finished size of the vinyl letters. I used a hand-held plane to bevel the front edges of the board a bit. I spray-painted the lumber with some cheap red spray paint I had in the garage and then painted over the red with a new-to-me color, Rustoleum's Oregano.

Then I used some coarse sandpaper to distress the board, allowing a little of the red to peek through the green.

Once my board was ready, I had only to follow the directions enclosed with the vinyl letters to produce a fun "Welcome" sign.

I hung the sign on our screened-in porch, and I like the way it looks. I'd never even thought about putting anything on that sliver of wall above the screens, but I think the welcome sign looks as if it's always been there.

I should give credit where credit is due: Manuela at The Pleasures of Homemaking made a sign for her beautiful porch earlier this year, and her idea inspired me.

What do you think of my DIY "lemonade"? What would have done with the lemons?

Check out the wonderful projects at Kimba's today!