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This week I totally had an out of body experience. It is one thing to see your company name on letterheads, but it is another to see it goes on the side of a building!

Originally I was quoted by a building signs company to pay $1200 for brand new building signs. Really? $1200? Thanks, no thanks. So I went to Loew’s and matched a bucket of the paint to the building color (It came out close but still slightly off since the sample was fairly dirty from years of dust and rain. But the funny thing is the paint doesn’t look matched with our neighbor on our left side, but matches the neighbor on the right side. So I guess it is sort of close!).

I also ordered stencil from an internet company that specializes in outdoor stencils. So yesterday I had two of our movers painted in the morning, then had them climbed onto the trellis to put the stencil up. I had them folded the stencil in half to determine the center line, eyeballed the middle roughly, then place the stencil onto the wall.

To put the stencil up, peel off the backing so the sticky side of stencil is revealed. You want to make sure you have the letters on correctly, not backward. This is why you sometimes see vehicles with their advertising backward, because they didn’t pay attention when they applied the stencil. Once it’s on, you need to make sure all the air bubbles are out by using something like a ruler or spatula to smooth the stencil out.

Then it is ready for paint! Technically you should dab the paint lightly, because the paint can seep through under the stencial and not have a clean look. We thought we would be okay since we applied the stencil pretty carefully, so we layed out the paint pretty thick.

We left it to dry over night, and the next day I climbed up the trellis myself to peel of the stencil. It came out with little dots around the lettering (paint still seeped through under the stencil) but since the building sign was so far away, most people won’t notice anyway.

It was challenging to climb up, I ended up using 2 ladders (I never was very sporty when I was growing up, let along climbing trees…). It was scary but thrilling.

All and all, I just still can’t believe now there is a building with our company name on it!!! WOOHOO! It was definitely an amazing feeling! It feels like that my small business has gone to the next level!

The second best part was that the whole thing cost $200, instead of $1200!