DIY Rustic Wooden Sign Electrical Panel Cover Tutorial

• Firstly, measure well your electrical panel and add about 2 to the width and height.
• Cut your wood board pieces to the necessary width and use as many boards as you need to meet the height. Don’t worry if it’s not the exact height, it can be a bit taller if you have the space.
• I used pinewood shiplap but you can use pinewood boards, plywood, or to be honest any scrap wood you might have that meets the size requirements.

STAINING AND DRY BRUSHING YOUR WOOD PIECES

• So first you are going to stain your wood with the Walnut stain using your cloth (or brush) and let them dry.
• Once the boards have dried (and sanded if necessary) you are going to dry brush on a thin coat of grey latex paint.
• If you aren’t familiar with the dry brush technique, just put some paint on a plastic or paper plate and spread it out, then take a dry brush and get a tiny bit of paint on the end of the bristles.
• Now you are going to just brush this along your wood, re-dip in the paint as necessary, but don’t overdo this because you want your brush to remain slightly dry, so get every bit of paint off you can before you get more on there. When you are done it should look like this.
• Let them dry for a little while and then repeat this process with white paint. Let them dry well this time.
• Once the boards are completely dry, you are going to sand and distress them with your Grade 2 Steel Wool. Here is when I suggest you wear your gloves and wear protective eyewear. Steel wool will be sticking out of your fingers and that’s not fun! Keep sanding until you are happy with the result.
• Then If you want you can sand with 80 grit sandpaper to remove any hard splinters.
• Clean off any dust residue on your wood boards, and you are going to apply another coat of the wood stain but this time clean off the excess of stain with a clean cloth. Let fully dry.
• When you are happy with how it looks, give it a light sanding with a dry piece of steel wool or sandpaper.
• In the meanwhile…
• Paint your letters or wood sign if needed and let them dry.

ASSEMBLING THE WOODEN SIGN ELECTRICAL PANEL COVER.

• Once all your wood pieces are finished and dry it’s time to put them together.
• At this point you have your mainboards for the sign, 3 or 4 (up to you) pine lumbers and your lettering ready.
• 2 of your lumbers should measure your sign height minus a few millimeters and the other 2 lumber should measure the width minus the 2 side lumbers. You will see what I mean in a bit.
• Align together your mainboards with the right side facing down (trust me I didn’t and it was a bit annoying to turn them after LOL). In my case since I used shiplap, I fitted them together and aligned the edges.
• Apply a line of wood glue along the lumber and place them along the edges.
• Secure them with clamps to make sure they don’t move and stick well. Let it dry for a little while.
• Turn your board facing up and remove the clamps. If you notice the glue is still not completely dry put clamps back and let dry a few more minutes.
• Once your board is completely dry, put some nails along the edges making sure you get the pine lumbers. I put about 2 nails on each board.
• Place your letters where you like them the most.
• In my case, the lettering words came with hangers so it made it easy for me and I can even switch words every now and then. But if yours don’t have this, then my suggestion is to set the place where you want the words and mark some wide spaces to drill a hole (make sure you use a really thin drill bit).
• Once you have the hole just screw it from the back of the sign. Another option can always be using glue (but I don’t trust it, you don’t want to be woken up at the middle of the night with the noise of the words falling)
• Mark where the hangers should be and screw in a screw.
• Hang the words and voila! The wood sign cover is ready!