How to make a DIY Farmhouse Sign without Building Anything

If you look around farmhouse signs are everywhere. Although they can add such a warm touch to many spaces in the home. But they can also cost a lot more than I am willing to spend sometimes. So I came up with a very inexpensive alternative to making farmhouse style signs on cabinet doors.

When I was looking at my local Restore I noticed cabinet doors that ranged from $2-$5 and even less on sale days. I saw a bunch of them that were unfinished and thought they would be perfect to transform into farmhouse signs!

Here’s an example of the unfinished cupboard doors I found.

Since I didn’t own a Cricut at the time and didn’t want to go anywhere to print off words large enough to fill my cabinet doors (too complicated at the time). I headed over to Hobby Lobby and found a “gather” wood sign that could work as a stencil. I figured I could make multiple signs with the same piece. The wood stencil like thing happened to be 50% off too! So extra bonus!!

They turned into really nice signs so I thought I would share them with you today. If you have old cabinet doors that you would like to give a new purpose than check out the tutorial below!

So here’s how you do it:

1. Stain the outer edge of the cupboard door.

Using the stain of your choice. Stain the outer edge of your cupboard. If you have a finish on the cupboard. Remove it first with a sander. Then apply your stain to the wood. Follow the instructions on your stain.

2. Tape and paint the center of the cupboard door

After your stain has dried tape around the edges of your cupboard door with painters tape. Then paint the center of the door. I used white chalk paint to paint the center of the cupboard door. When the paint is dried. Remove the tape.

3. Place stencil on your wood and trace around it with a pencil.

Once your paint is dry. Place the wooden stencil where you want it to be. Trace around the words with a pencil. You could also just glue the wooden stencil on the sign but I want to make multiple signs so I just traced around the gather.

4. Paint the letters you drew

Next just take some black acrylic paint and paint over the area you drew.

5. Erase any pencil marks

Then just erase and areas where you might be able to see pencil marks. You can use a sharpie marker to correct any rough edges, etc. You can also touch up any areas you made a mistake with a small paint brush and white paint.

And that’s it!

Now you have a beautiful farmhouse sign instead of an old cupboard door.

I love how solid these signs end up being as well. They are sturdy and very high quality once you finish them. So now when you see an old cupboard door, instead of throwing it away turn it into a beautiful farmhouse sign!

The wonderful thing is you can continue to make multiple signs with the same wood stencil and give them as presents to friends and family. Here are a couple other signs I made from the same stencil.