Recycled Wood American Flag DIY

I pulled apart the roofing boards with the backwards setting on the BLACK+DECKER drill. I love how lightweight this drill is. Made this job super fast. I didn't want the roofing-look overlap, which is why I took this apart to rebuild it flat.

Pieces taken apart and ready to go back together...just slightly differently. I ended up only using six of the eight boards for the flag. I also recycled the 2-2x4's as well as all of the screws.

I cut the 2x4's since I used a couple of less boards.

I laid the boards back on the shorter 2x4's. I didn't use all of the same holes... I wanted the flag to look very weathered and barnwood-ish. Leaving a few holes empty helped with that.

I used the same old screws and drilled the boards (this time flat) into the 2x4's at each end. Again, the work was lickety split with this new BLACK+DECKER drill.

I started painting the piece all over with white chalk paint. I used vinyl stars and painted over them with the same white...to seal them since these boards were so bumpy.

Once the white was dried, I did a simple blue milk paint over the star area. I did tape the off the blue section to make it easier.

I did every other board with red milk paint.

Then I sanded the entire piece to age it a bit.

Then I used dark wax to deepen the aging.

I used natural-colored wax to pull the darker wax off in some areas to make the aging seem more natural.

The waxes also seal the piece, so it doesn't wear too much outdoors.