This post means I’ve finally finished the corn hole boards!!!  You have no idea how excited that makes me..

Alrighty, so in Part One of my corn hole board adventure I basically got the boards ready to paint, and primed them.  Now it’s time to recap the fun (and extremely time consuming) part of painting a design on them and making them personalized.

Repainting Corn Hole Boards – Part 2

What you’ll need:

• Corn hole boards
• Paint
• Paint brush / roller
• Painter’s tape
• Pencil
• Yard stick
• Printed out letters as a stencil
• Polycrylic base polyurthane

Now that I was ready to paint, I needed to decide on a design.  I had a hard time choosing between something nautical with a W, or something football related.  I even sourced some help from you guys on Facebook and Instagram.  Ultimately, football won out and I decided to do full Georgia Tech and Clemson football fields.

I looked through my paint supplies, had Hunter choose a Clemson orange, and headed to Hobby Lobby for the rest of the paint I needed.

Before I started painting, I had to do some math.  I figured out how big the end zones would be, where the 50 yard line would be, measured and drew lines on both of the boards.  Once those were done, it was time to start painting the grass.

After I did the first coat of green and the end zones, I figured it’d be a good idea to use painter’s tape for clean lines (mine weren’t as good as I had hoped – I blame it on the wine).  I added the painter’s tape on top and then worked on another coat of green.

Four coats of green later, I was happy with the grass color and I removed the painter’s tape.   Then I put some painter’s tape down on the other side to work on the end zones.  The orange and gold end zones took about 3 coats of paint.

Note: This was about the time a tree came into our garage, aka my corn hole board painting area.  The boards got wet, but seemed ok, but there was a long break in painting progress.

With the base colors done, I turned my attention to the yard lines.  This involved more math.  I figured out how big the “field” was, then determined where the 50 yard line needed to be and drew my lines using a yard stick to keep everything straight.  Then I measured, and drew out the 10, 20, 30 and 40 yard lines on both boards in pencil.

Now on to the end zone lettering —  I needed the letters to be 4″ high to fit nicely in the end zones, so I found the right fonts to use online, and typed out Clemson and Georgia Tech in the right size.  I printed them, and cut the letters out to make a stencil (somehow I forgot how long cutting out letters takes).  Then I arranged all the letters in the end zones to use as a stencil, and traced them with a pencil.

I also traced out where the Clemson paw would go at the 50 yard line, and the GT logos at the 35 yard lines, like the real fields.  I skipped the ACC logos… I was already way behind on time and not trying to add on more work at this point.

Once I had a guide for the letters and logos, the letters were painted white.  They got 2-3 coats each before I was happy with the color.

Then, I outlined the letters a few times in navy blue, or purple paint. The outlining process helped cover up any blunders I had when painting the letters too 🙂

The logos needed paint next.  The paw print became orange, and the GT logos were done in gold.  After a few coats for each of those, they were all outlined in white.

Finally it looked like I had made progress!

Next, I painted all of the yard lines and added the yard line numbers.  I used my yard stick to make sure the lines were straight, otherwise I’d have some crooked lines..  Since I didn’t have much real estate to work with, Only the 10 yard lines are marked on the boards.  Adding in 5 yard lines would have gotten a little crowded.

The last part of completing the football fields was to paint was the numbers for the yard lines.  I tried to keep my handwriting consistent and I did 4 sidelines worth of 10-50 yard lines.

I give you football fields!

Once the tops of the boards were painted how I wanted them, I needed to paint the sides to cover the primer paint.  I had bought some gray paint when I thought I’d be doing more of a nautical theme, so I used that to paint the sides and the bottom.

I lined the edges of the top with painter’s tape to prevent any bleeding on the “field.”  Of course, it took 3 coats of gray to be a nice color with no primer showing through.

I think we’re on like step 15 now…. At last, the painting was done!  The last step was to seal everything in so nothing would ever chip.  I headed to Lowe’s to get some polyurthane, and thank goodness I talked to the paint guy while I was looking.

Since I used acrylic paint for all the football field details, and acrylic paint is water based, I needed a water based sealer.  If I would have used regular polyurethane, then the paint would have cracked and all my work would be dunzo. Seriously, thank goodness I talked to the guy.

I picked up a can of polycrylic sealer instead, and applied 4 coats.  It recommends 3, but I was determined that all the hours of painting I put in wouldn’t be put to waste by them chipping from a lack of sealer.

Finally, we needed bags for the boards.  I had to keep with the football theme, so I ordered a ‘house divided’ set from Baggo so I could have both Georgia Tech and Clemson bags in complementary colors to the boards.

A few weeks, lots of rain, several coats of paint, and 75+ man hours later, the corn hole boards were finally done.  Luckily there’s a lifetime left to enjoy them 🙂

With this project done, I feel like I’ll have plenty of free time after work!  Now back to our guest room…