Pin-Inspired Growth Chart

Pin Inspired- Growth Chart Ruler

A little sneak of what I have been up to lately! If anyone knows me, they know I'm a pin addicted! I am absolutely obsessed, with no shame about the amount of time Iwaste  use on pinterest. Well, with our living room redo, I have been putting some of those pins to the test and here is one of them that I actually made for a friends baby shower, and loved it SO much I decided that I need one for the living room as well.

The original idea for this project came from the blog Dear Lilly. She has some adorable tutorials and her house is just beautiful! The project if you haven't already guessed is the over-sized growth chart/ruler that she has hanging in her dining area. When I first saw the project I thought wow, this is just awesome! We rent the home we are in, and could never really do the mark your height thing and the paper charts never last throughout the years of use. So, this to me just seemed SO cleaver.

On that note, here is my version of this "Growth Chart Ruler" 

Sorry for nasty photo quality...it was a last minute snap!

This was so seriously easy to do! And the cost wasn't that bad considering the supplies bought, other than the wood, was all reusable for other projects!

Supplies:

1- 6ft x 10in piece of wood ($9.00)

1- Minwax Quart Wood Finish/Stain; Provincial 211 ($8.00)

1- Minwax Fast- Drying Polyurethane Gloss 1/2 pt. ($7.00

1- 4in Lettering Stencils ($10.00)

1- Black Sharpie Marker

1- Sander

1- Measuring Tape/ Tri-Square

To start take your piece of wood and give it a good sanding to smooth it out! Takes just a few minutes if you have a little power sander and it makes a world of a difference when staining, plus you don't want any sharp edges with a little one around it.

Once that is done, wipe it clean. Grab your brush/towel and put on your coat of stain. I only did one coat of the stain cause I didn't want it to be so dark that it made it more difficult to see the numbers. Apply your stain, wait, then wipe is down. Let dry for 8 hours.

After the 8 hours, grab your ruler and on the left side, begin by measuring and marking each inch up the side. Then grab your sharpie and your square, find your first dot starting at the bottom of your board, and line it up to draw your lines on the dots. Now here is where you need to be careful that your lines stay straight and you use the right length. You will be using two different line lengths, 1in and 2.5 in.

The pattern is two 1 in marks, then one 2.5 in mark.

Once you have all of these complete, its time to do those numbers! To keep your ruler accurate, you want to be sure that you place your number one correctly on your board. Think about where you are going to be hanging this, and measure and decide from there. On this board, I went up the the second 2.5 in line and placed my stencil at the end on the line. Using your sharpie, trace it out, then carefully fill it in. After this, every 4th 2.5 in line is where you will place the next number using the same method as done with the one.

Then when all of them are complete, grab your gloss, and give is a good thin coat. Allow to dry. Then attach your piece on the back to hang. We used wire and two small screws! Its just that simple!

P.S.-  There are more photos to come in the future! I am making another one of these for my living room, and will do a better step by step photo for everyone! 

P.S.S.- Any style stencil can be used, you can use any color stain your prefer. Make this your own! I sure did, and its totally worth the personal touch!