DIY "Wash & Dry" Laundry Room Sign

I've been on a mission to turn our laundry room from a sad little afterthought of a room into one of those pretty rooms you see on Pinterest and Fixer Upper. Unfortunately, our laundry room happens to also house the furnace and air conditioning unit, along with being the central hub for all of our plumbing, so it's a little cluttered and sad. 

Nothing a few good decor pieces can't fix.

At our annual trip to the Hartville flea market, I found some awesome treasures including a snow shoe (to hang in our lodge-themed basement media room!), a vintage cast iron clothing iron, and a piece of reclaimed wood. The wood was the perfect size, weight, and color to use as a canvas to create the laundry room sign I had in my mind. And look at that built-in character!

Joanna Gaines is shaking.

​

Use any piece of wood you have laying around. If you want the reclaimed look, try looking on Craigslist and eBay for some great deals if you don't have a flea market near you. If the rustic look isn't your thing, paint a new piece of wood from a hardware store with black chalkboard paint and use that as your base. Have fun!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links, meaning that I may make a commission if you choose to click through and make a purchase. I only link to products that I truly recommend. Thank you for your support!

After looking at signs on eBay, Etsy, and at stores like Home Goods and Gabes, I continuously came up empty. I found some cute ones on Pinterest, and decided to make my own out of reclaimed wood to tie in the rustic elements of my decor, and to coordinate with the new color I painted my basement (Grandfather Clock Brown by Benjamin Moore... absolute perfection!) since the laundry room is down there. 

We took the long way around back to the car after lunch at Hartville, and I happened to stumble upon a table we missed the first time around, and propped up against one of the legs was a stack of a few pieces of old wood. The nice man sold a piece to me for $5, and it was the icing on the cake of a successful day! ​

Now for the hard part - settling on a word or saying for the sign. I've never really been a fan of things like using a big letter in a gallery wall, or hanging a sign that says "Eat" in the kitchen, but I feel like I don't mind it in the laundry room... maybe because it's not something I have to stare at every single day where I feel like I would get sick of it. 

I spent about a half hour searching my house for a pencil and couldn't find a single one. You know when you feel like you've seen something a million times, but then when you actually need it, you can't find it anywhere? 

Yep. 

But, I did find a piece of chalk which turned out to be the ideal instrument for sketching out my design.

​

I started by simply writing out the letters, without any extra swirls or designs. I wanted to make sure the spacing looked good and that the saying didn't creep me out once I actually saw it in person. The best thing about the chalk is that you can simply wipe it away and redo it if it's not perfect, even better than a pencil that may have left behind marks. 

​

Once the spacing looked okay, I went in and added some extra flourishes. I feel like middle school, high school, and college prepped me for moments like this. I spent countless hours doodling and creating extravagant lettering in my notebooks when I should have been listening and taking notes. Who was the 15th president? No clue, but look how cute this lettering is! 

Yay for education. 

​

As you can see in the coming photos, I eventually changed the & from a symbol to a word. If you compare the completed sign, you may notice that I actually completely erased the word Dry and started over. It was up a little too high at first and I couldn't get the spacing between the letters to look right! Again, chalk is the best for this reason. 

If you've never done lettering before, try practicing on paper first. I always start by just writing out the words in plain old handwriting. Then, I go in and extend the ends of the letters (W, H, and Y are perfect to experiment on first). Add swirls onto other parts of the letters. Keep with the same style throughout the words. If you wanted to go for a blockier style, you could try making one part of each letter bold, and keeping the rest of the letter as is, then adding lines or dots outside of the words to fill in space.

​

Another easy technique is to write out the letters in plain handwriting, then write the same thing right overtop. Don't try to make it perfect - you want some space between the letters. Then, shade in those spaces to thicken up parts of each letter and to make the two words look like one, and add in swirls on the ends if you want. 

​

The key is to keep checking your work as you go. Add or take away as you see fit until you're happy with the finished look. I found from taking pictures for this blog in particular that my phone screen was actually a great way to see the sign as a whole. Once everything looks good, you're ready for paint!

You could leave the sign with just the chalk, but I had some Chalked paint by Rust-Oleum leftover from refinishing my old dresser and cedar chest, and it worked perfectly for this project. You could also use regular acrylic art paint, but I love the ultra matte white that this one gives off; you get the matte finish of chalk but with the boldness of paint. I used a small paint brush, which was good for making the ends of the swirls nice and wispy.

After dipping into the paint each time, I would place it down first in the thickest part of the letter, then use very light-handed strokes to move the paint into the thin parts. If you feel like it's starting to get too thick, don't worry. You really can't mess this up.

Thicken up a couple other letters to tie everything in, or wrap the end of your finger in a wet paper towel and wipe away the extra paint. There's no need to wipe off the excess chalk once the paint is on because it will all blend in and actually add to the look of the design. If we'd used a pencil, we would have to erase any visible lines, and probably get gray smudges all over our pretty white paint!

My final step was to add some more chalk swirls around the letters. I wanted it to look wispy and not too stark, so this helped to blend the letters with the background better. I decided not to go over these in paint because I wanted it to have a different color and texture from the painted letters. 

​

For now, this little guy will lean up against the wall under the laundry room cabinets, but eventually, it will hang above the washer and dryer with some shelves to house some decor pieces like the cast iron clothing iron and my vintage washboard.