I landed a fun customization project in late September this year. I received an order on my online shop for my Vintage Cup Stand and along with the order came a request to upcycle the client’s teak wood address boards.
This order from Audrey who lives in the same city as me. It was easier to accept a request for restoration as the shipping costs for sending the product to me, would have been vey low. The wooden boards were really heavy owing to the brass numbers attached to the front of both the boards. You can see the new design on my online art shop.
The boards were in a bot of bad shape. The wood at the back was peeling off and the brass numbers were dull and their polish was oxidized owing to lack of regular polishing. Some of the brass numbers had come loose also.
In such restoration projects, a big chunk of my time and effort is spent on preparing the wooden surface for the handpainting part. I spent an entire week on repair and preparing the wooden base. I started put by pulling off all the brass numbers from the base gently. I dipped them into a bowl of turpentine oil and later rubbed off all the oxidation from their surface. Next day I polished them off with Brasso and kept them aside.
The next step was to repair the wood surface. It tool me an entire work day of sanding with various grades of sand paper to clean and prepare the wood for painting. Once the wood was smooth, I started my favorite part of the process. Painting the base with color! 🙂 It took a lot messages back & forth between me and the patron to finalize the background color of her choice. She left the rest of the painting process in my hands and trusted my experience as an artist to create a beautiful final piece for her.
Once the painting of floral backgrounds on the boards was done, I topped it off with one cat of protective varnish. The came the part, where i used epoxy glue to stick back the brass numbers to the front of both address sign boards. The last bot was to carefully cover the wooden address plaques with exterior varnish, while avoiding the brass numbers.
Design5 keeps its sustainability promise. I try to minimise my work’s carbon footprint by using clean recycled packing material. I also donate a tree in the client’s name for every wooden product sold. The client also receives an e-certificate via an email with a unique tracking code to check the progress of their tree online.
Buying a Design5 Upcycled Functional Art provides you with peace of mind. You know that you have made a positive choice for your family and the environment’s safe future. Your choice of buying upcycled products saved another tree from cutting.
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