I’ve seen colorful milepost signs during my travels over the past couple years. I always thought they looked so “vacationy” if that’s a word. So I decided to make one of my own for our back yard. It was a super easy project, the longest part was letting the paint dry between coats. I wanted to go ahead and get this done, I had some wisteria about to bloom outback near to where the milepost sign would be and I thought it would look so pretty with wisteria draped through it.
I used pressure treated fence pieces, sold individually at home improvement stores for a couple dollars a piece. I bought 4 in 6’ lengths. I was able to get two 30” pieces cut from one board. I cut irregular shaped “points” using a miter saw. The edges were lightly sanded, but I wanted mine to look very authentic, so perfection wasn’t the goal here. I painted them all different bright colors, using sample paint pots that I had collected from previous projects. But temember to be creative, you can mix different colors together to make another color, or you can add white to make a lighter shade of a color. I had to do multiple coats as this wood just drank the paint up. After they were completely dry from the final coat I used a fine tip paintbrush with a different color paint for the lettering.
I used the names of places that we have lived along with our favorite local beach and restaurant. I used mapquest for the mileage if you want to include that. You can use different width boards, different lengths, you can paint them all the same color or you can leave them all a natural color that will only turn more and more weathered looking over time. The sky’s the limit.
I really, really wanted to use a large piece of driftwood as my post, but I never found anything close so……..we just so happened to have the perfect thing. A tall, skinny holly tree had been damaged from the ice storms we had a couple years ago and the top finally broke off during some high winds. What better timing. I used the top of that tree and my husband removed the bark for me using a drawing knife. Using post hole diggers he dug the hole about 3 feet and packed the dirt around the post. We thought about using some quickcrete but it wasn’t necessary, it is very solid. Placing the signs randomly, pointing in all directions, I then used an electric drill with deck screws to screw each sign to the post.
Ours is out back by the courtyard and patio and it makes the perfect perch for the birds while they wait their turn at the feeder!