I haven't been this excited about doing something in our home in a long time! After the birth of our daughter last March, renovations have slowed to a crawl. We have the kitchen mostly completed, but there are the little things that get left until the end and sometimes never get done, especially when you have a husband who really doesn't mind minor things, like mismatched light switches and gaps in the trim. Five years ago or so, my brother found an amazing set of vintage diner signs for sale on the side of the road and bought them. I was living in Miami at the time, but I made him promise to save me the other half of the "Lunch" sign; I would find some way to get it, I vowed. He now has his own sign hanging in his family room; these are like our version of two halves of a "BFF" necklace.
Fast forward a few years, and we're now living in an old farmhouse in Michigan, with the Lunch sign stored in our barn. My husband claimed he didn't like it, but I suspected that it was more that he was overwhelmed by how we would hang such a large, heavy sign. In my former life, I worked for an art services company that, among many things, hung artwork for museums, galleries, etc., and one of my favorite tricks is hanging heavy things with a cleat. You cut a piece of board to fit behind the object, screw it into the studs, then hang your objet d'art from the board. In this case, we cut a piece of 1x4 oak that we had in the barn, then screwed the sign directly to it through some holes that were already in the sign. It looks like it was originally lit by roping a strand of lights around each letter with some broken clamps that I removed when I was cleaning the sign. I love the idea of adding lights back to it someday, and using it as a nightlight for the kitchen.
Fast forward a few years, and we're now living in an old farmhouse in Michigan, with the Lunch sign stored in our barn. My husband claimed he didn't like it, but I suspected that it was more that he was overwhelmed by how we would hang such a large, heavy sign. In my former life, I worked for an art services company that, among many things, hung artwork for museums, galleries, etc., and one of my favorite tricks is hanging heavy things with a cleat. You cut a piece of board to fit behind the object, screw it into the studs, then hang your objet d'art from the board. In this case, we cut a piece of 1x4 oak that we had in the barn, then screwed the sign directly to it through some holes that were already in the sign. It looks like it was originally lit by roping a strand of lights around each letter with some broken clamps that I removed when I was cleaning the sign. I love the idea of adding lights back to it someday, and using it as a nightlight for the kitchen.
