Nautical Wall Decor with Vintage Drawer Handles

As luck would have it, my friends are constantly offering up freebies for me to repurpose for my blog. And so was the case with these vintage drawer handles. My friend, Teri, had given her mother’s dresser a makeover for her daughter’s new apartment. When she asked if I wanted the old hardware, I eagerly took them off her hands. They looked JUST LIKE dock cleats or boat cleats to me, and I wanted to transform them into some nautical wall decor.

To bring my vision of coastal wall decor to life, I need a plank of wood and something else to spruce it up. After rummaging through my stack of scrap wood, and a quick flip through my stencil file, I gathered everything I’d need to bring this idea to life.

I just needed a little wood stain, some stenciling, and to paint the drawer handles with silver paint to make them look like dock cleats. I think this idea for nautical wall decor will work out, don’t you?

This post contains affiliate links for your crafting convenience. As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases. All blue, bold, and underlined text is a clickable link, either to a product or to a related post.

This post was also sponsored by Weatherwood Stains. Their products were provided to me free of charge, but all opinions and results are my own.

Nautical Wall Decor with Weatherwood Stains and Vintage Drawer Handles

I needed to enrich my plain plank of oak plywood with the right stain- so, I decided to give Weatherwood Stains a try. And more specifically, I used Restoration stain, which should pair well with my piece of oak plywood.

Per the directions on the can, I sanded my wood board with an 80-grit disk against the grain to open it up and help the Weatherwood Stains work its magic.

Then, using a clean rag, I wiped on 2 coats of wood stain.

Because Weatherwood Stains are reactive, the full color change happens over the course of several minutes. Check out this quick time lapse video (originally 15 minutes) of the second coat drying!

This is how the board looked after the two coats of Weatherwood Stains had completely dried:

Next, I needed to seal the nautical wall decor with a thin coat of Clear Maintenance Oil. This will really bring the oak plywood to life!

Vintage Drawer Handles as Nautical Hooks for Coastal Wall Decor

Is that gorgeous or what? I love how the stain brought out the nuances of the grain in alternating brown and gray tones. This color of Weatherwood Stains was perfect for my plan to make some nautical wall decor.

Ok, now onto the stenciling! The stencil I used for the coastal wall decor was actually an adhesive mesh stencil, which I had never used before.

In some ways, I loved it (the adhesiveness ensured no bleed through whatsoever and didn’t leave any sticky residue).

But in other ways, it was annoying. Stippling the paint didn’t work very well through the mesh letters, so I swirled the paint instead. Which was fine, but gauging the right amount of paint to use was difficult.

In the end, though, it worked out beautifully- and my inability to gauge paint quantity lent itself to naturally distressed stenciling!

Finally, I turned my attention back to the vintage drawer handles that launched this idea of nautical wall decor!

To transform them into dock cleats or boat cleats, I used a metallic silver spray paint that gave them a hammered silver look.

And then it was time to combine the stenciled sign with the vintage drawer handles to finish up the nautical home decor!

Nautical Wall Decor with Vintage Drawer Handles

Using a speed square, we carefully measured and drilled holes for the boat cleats.

I swapped out new nuts and bolts to extend the nautical hooks out from the wood, thus giving plenty of space to be used as coat hooks.

That was it! I had upcycled those vintage drawer handles into boat cleats or dock cleats. And now they’ll serve as nautical hooks on some coastal wall decor!

If you enjoyed this upcycling idea for coastal decor, then you may also be interested in these sea glass bottles that I made from my recycling bin!

Craft on!

S

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