Beach Huts and Beach Towels!

Here is a picture that I found on Pinterest. Isn’t this grand? It’s for keys. I just figured that making it larger would work perfectly for beach towels. A creative eye will see something and reimagine it. (another idea: little farmhouses for a hallway coat rack!)

I have left over Cedar planks from our custom designed fence. Cedar is great to work with if you don’t mind sanding the heck out of it. Using scrap lumber cuts down the cost. Buying new lumber should cost no more than $10.

Abby is always close at hand. She’s my little cutie.

I cut beach hut patterns out of a grocery bag. This helped me to figure out what size and how many. Later you’ll see pictures that will give you measurements.

I started to paint and really liked how it looked with less than full coverage. The cedar peeking through looks great.

Here are the pieces of wood needed for this project. I used my 4 1/2 inch hand held circular saw to cut the wood. There are hooks, red vinyl and little sticks for the flags. In addition to the three pieces of wood for the sign I have three more pieces for the back side. The plan is to glue the main boards and then attach the other narrower boards on the back.

At this point the boards have been glued together with liquid nails. I use cheap shelf liner from Walmart for my stencil material. I create the design (in this case the words Beach Towels) on my computer and cut it out on the silhouette machine.

This shows the size I decided for this project. But you can make it any size. I used three pieces but you can use four as seen in the inspiration my photo.

I use mod Podge first. I brush it on left to right and then up and down. Once this dries it really helps to prevent paint seepage under the stencil. This is a life saver.

These three narrow boards are for the back side. I’ll attach the shorter one in the middle. The two longer ones will be on each side. I’m going to nail and screw them on so that they are flush on the bottom but stick up a little bit on the top. The backside boards will keep the project sturdy.

Sizes for the huts and their little doors. The wood for the doors is much thinner than the rest.

I painted black sticks and added red vinyl flags. (The next time I used nails instead. So much nicer and easier.)

I put wood on the back side and attached with glue and a brad nailer. Sometimes I’ll add a few screws if I think it’s necessary.

I painted each beach hut and doors. Making each a little different. I smeared on liquid nails to hold the doors on. Later the hooks will be screwed in.

The E6000 was to make sure the flags polls will stay put. I drilled a little notch in the back and then glued the flag pole. Next I used a ruler and liquid nails to place the huts. It’s at this point that I turned the whole project around and used the brad nailer from the back side to shoot some nails into the beach huts. The next step is to add the hooks. I used screws long enough to go through the beach hut and into the main boards. Finally I drilled a hole into the boards sticking up from the back side and added rope for make it easy to hang.

Now you can see the hut colors. I’m happy to say this one sold within a day.

This picture shows how the wood in the back and on the sides is used to hang this up.

Here is another one that I made. Different colors and size. My scrap lumber sometimes dictates the size. I painted hardware washers for the life preserver and added bunting flags on one of the houses.

The wood is a bit different on this one. Plus I used scrapbook paper and mod podge on some of the huts. The beach ball is painted on a piece of flat sided round wood. I added a shell to one hut and using a small wood tag I added a number to the third hut. If you look closely you will notice that the wood that is screwed into the back side are 5 gallon paint stirs. In addition the paint stir stick is the perfect size for the little doors.

This reminds me of playing with doll houses!!

So which one do you like the best?