Our DIY Exterior Feature Wall

This is a project we’ve been dreaming up for over a year now.

I remember vividly when this project popped into my head, and I proposed it to Jase. We were driving home from our family beach trip in June 2021. It ended up just being Jase and me in the car (our kids are mostly grown so they drive themselves to/from the beach :) ). We were both kind of quiet just listening to music and, as always, my wheels were turning. I was thinking about first impressions and what I want our guest to see when arrive at the property.

I had an idea to put a sign on the side of the warehouse wall. That side of the warehouse is very visible from the cottages, so I thought it would be neat to use that blank space to create something special. Like an Instagramable moment for our guest. I started talking through it out loud with Jase, and he was immediately on board with the idea.

We immediately went into brainstorming mode. We had lots of ideas. So many, that I got overwhelmed. When I get flooded with ideas, I have to draw them out or write them down in an effort to keep everything going on in my brain organized. For some reason, I had a mini spiral notebook in my car, so I grabbed it and started drawing.

A tiny glimpse at what’s going on inside my head.

The sign in the middle, some gooseneck lighting over it and the “x” pattern is the landscape cabling. The squiggly lines on the “x” pattern represent the climbing vines, and then of course, some big trees to anchor each side of the sign and some landscaping in between. Once we both agreed on this, then we were like, “Well, maybe we need a sign out by the gate at the entrance, too.”. So we got busy brainstorming that sign. We want the signage to speak to each other, but we don’t want them to be matchy matchy, so we were working through how to do that. We also want the property to feel more modern in style, but not lose sight of nature and the all the natural beauty it has to offer. So, with that in mind, we came up with two different design options.

I’m clearly no artist, but sketching out my ideas helps me communicate what I see in my head.

Lucky for me, Jase typically understands what’s going on inside my brain and somehow manages to create something from these scribbles. I also used these drawings to reach out to a Knoxville based sign company. There’s a strong possibility they thought I was nuts. Nonetheless, we talked through our ideas , discussed scale and dimensions, and left it in their hands. They came back to us a few weeks later with some mock ups. Based on the very little information I provided them and these lovely drawings, they did a great job on the mock ups, but we weren’t sold on any of them.

That’s when I realized we needed a branding company. Someone to help us truly create an identity for the property. We pressed pause on creating the signage and set out to find a branding company that fit our style (more to come on that topic). In the meantime, we knew that we needed to paint the exterior of the buildings. Last Fall, we spent four days pressure washing and painting the warehouse building and the shop building. We are far from done, but what an improvement!

Fast forward almost a year, we’ve finalized our logos and are ready to get back to bringing this feature wall to life. So here’s the warehouse wall - Before. The entrance is to the right of this picture.

It’s basic and boring.

Jase used my drawing to map out the landscape cabling and determine the materials we needed. He spent an evening shopping around online and was able to order everything we needed from Amazon.

I was thinking this was going to be a more complex project. I’m not sure why I thought that, it just seemed harder than it turned out to be. Jase did most of the heavy lifting on this one, and of course, my Dad helped a ton too. The first thing we did was taped off the size of the sign. We needed this to be finalized before we could determine all our connection points for the cabling. From there, Jase mapped out all our connection points, marking them with tape, drilling the holes and installed the eye bolts. From there, we just ran the cable through the eye bolts to create a diamond pattern on the wall.

There is nothing more rewarding than dreaming up an idea and watching it come to life. It wasn’t hard work, but it was hot and that made it hard. Working against that black building just put off extra heat and we were all sweating our tails off out there, but at the end of the day, stepping back and seeing it come together made it all worth it.

After - it doesn’t seem like much now, but I promise, it’ll steal the show when it’s all said and done.