As a proponent of DIY decor, when I saw some rustic wood houses at nearby store, I decided to use them as inspiration and build my own!
I’ve started my office makeover guys!
Lower cabinets are installed, electricians came and re-routed a couple of outlets for me and I’ll be building the upper shelves this week! I’m so excited!
But with such a big build on my plate, I don’t have a lot of spare time to keep the blog filled with other major projects.
A girl can only do so much. 🤷🏻♀️
So, while glue is setting, wiring is being done, paint is drying etc, I’m going to post a few smaller projects that can be whipped out in less than an hour.
Like today’s rustic wood houses!
I was at Urban Barn looking for teen decor for my daughter’s new office when I came across some wooden houses they had for sale. I LOVED the simplicity and whimsy of the design and decided I was going to make a few for my soon-to-be office shelves.
I had some 4×4 scraps left over from my privacy fence posts, so I decided my wood houses would be fairly substantial in size. (The ones at Urban Barn were made from 2×4’s)
I set my mitre saw to a 45° angle and cut one edge so that the blade stopped at roughly the centre point.
I then used a speed square to mark where the bottom edge of the 45 was and drew a line across the scrap wood at that point.
This makes it easier to get your roof line even and level. Line up your blade at the centre point of the top of the roof and then shift it until the blade will finish at the line you’ve just drawn.
You can change up the pitch and angles of your rooflines by just adjusting the mitre saw angle and repeating with the square.
Next, I drilled a holes in each house to the depth of my jigsaw blade. I know that doesn’t make sense, but my game plan was to use the jig saw to square up the windows and doors, but if the blade hit the bottom of the wood (back of the hole) it would chatter everywhere and you’d lose control.
As it was I’m not sure the jigsaw was the best solution, but it did allow me to fit a chisel (very old and very dull) into each hole to try and square things up.
Did you know that you can use the term “rustic” or “shabby chic” for anything that has a less-than-perfect finish?
As though the errors were intentionally there for patina?
Yes, I need the word “rustic” in my life. 😂
So the back of the windows and doors in my rustic wood houses are a total shit show, and I had no idea how to clean them up…
so I painted them black and hope that no one looks waaaaaaaaay back in there to see.
That hid the worst of it right? I’ll call that a win. 😂
Next up was staining my wood houses – this is going to be the colour of the rooves, and the undercoat for the house face and sides.
I did this so that when I sand off some of the final finish on the houses, the dark brown will peek through.
Two coats of a combination of chalk paint and some extra Pale Oak I had in the garage. Once that was dry, I lightly sanded with 320 grit sandpaper to give that worn and weathered look.
The tallest wood house is 8″ to the peak. The others are 7″ and 6″ tall to give some variation in height.
I was tempted to make two more to make a larger grouping, but now that I see them on a shelf, I think 5 (at this size) would have been too much for my space.
Scrap wood!
If you are looking for something smaller – check out the scrap wood row houses I made out of scrap 2×2 wood – perfect for a window sill!
If you don’t feel like making your own rustic wood houses, I’m including the inspiration from Urban Barn… IF paying $26 per is okay with you.
Take it up a notch (or 100) and make your rustic wood houses look like this:
What?!
Oooooh! I love this one by Fijnwonen
But then it’s more sculptural isn’t it?
You could also leave your wood houses plain and skip all of the drilling/chiselling nonsense:
For me, I kind of like how my little beauties turned out. I wanted the wood houses from the store, but came up with my own version for free.
I’ll take DIY decor for the win!
Have a great one!