DIY Farmhouse Riser from Baseball Nubs

This project has been months in the mak­ing. In order for you to appre­ci­ate this project I have to share a lit­tle back story.

A few months ago I was asked to present a project at a live craft­ing event host­ed by Brooke Riley from Re-fabbed. I knew I want­ed to teach the ladies to make a farm­house ris­er. Fast for­ward a cou­ple weeks and I was tour­ing the Louisville Slug­ger Muse­um and Fac­to­ry in Louisville, KY. At the end of our tour we were encour­aged to take home a “nub” as a sou­venir. These nubs were cut off the ends of the bats at the very end of the assem­bly process just before they went to be paint­ed, sealed and shipped off to their new homes. 

There were lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of these that the muse­um pays to have hauled off dai­ly. They came from var­i­ous species of trees that were hand-select­ed by crafts­man. These crafts­man know how to select THE per­fect tree for mak­ing these spe­cial­ty bats. This wood was quite lit­er­al­ly THE BEST OF THE BEST!

That’s when it hit me. If they’re pay­ing for some­one to take these away then they cer­tain­ly should­n’t mind if I took more than a few…right? I start­ed stuff­ing the dia­per bag with these nubs think­ing to myself, “wow these would make the per­fect legs to a farm­house ris­er.” I lit­er­al­ly fill my bag to the brim and felt like a smug­gler with my price­less loot. I looked guilty from a mile away. I had my crazy, eye-twitch­ing, this is the best idea I’ve ever stinkin had “look”.…you feel me? That was it. I was just gonna have to let y crazy out and ask for like 300 nubs.

Long sto­ry short, after ask­ing a few peo­ple I end­ed up talk­ing with a jan­i­tor for the muse­um who hooked me up with over 300 fresh-cut nubs! You woul­da thought I had won the lot­tery! I loaded those suck­ers up in my dou­ble stroller and rode off into the Louisville, KY sun­set. I regret not hav­ing a pic­ture of at least one moment of that 6+ block adven­ture back to the hotel.

Fast for­ward and here we are. My dreams final­ly came true and I get to put this idea down on paper to share with all my oth­er crazy-cre­ative friends. I’d like to say that this is where the crazy ends but I’d be lying. 

The next step of this process involved a pie pan, a red sharpie, scrap wood, jig­saw, and a tail­gate. Cut­ting the 9in round for the top of the ris­er was a process in and of itself. Le’s just say my hus­band is a saint and hand-cut 80+ cir­cles for all the love­ly ladies attend­ing the craft­ing event.…

…I will spare you all the details, but here is our pret­ty top­per for the riser.

Are you still with me? This is where we actu­al­ly get to the project itself and we start to see all these crazy ideas fall into place.

I start­ed by hot glu­ing 4 even­ly spaced nubs to the bot­tom of my cir­cle. Just eye­ball it, or at least I did. I was wayyy to excit­ed to get this pup­py finished.

Next I stained the nubs and the under­side of the cir­cle top with Spe­cial Wal­nut 22 by Min­wax. My plan was to cre­ate a dis­tressed look and I pre­fer to work with a dark­er stain under­neath my white paint.

Then, sim­ply flip it over and cov­er the top as well.

Now you’re ready to move on to pain­ing your new riser…or don’t. It’s total­ly up up to you and your “cre­ative crazy” (insert crazy emo­ji here)

I use the same dis­tress­ing tech­nique for lit­er­al­ly every­thing. I bare­ly get a lit­tle bit of white paint on the tip of my brush and make long strokes across my wood. I should prob­a­bly work on a tuto­r­i­al for that… You can see a lit­tle more detail on this process from a pre­vi­ous project HERE.

Pro Tip

When using a dry brush­ing tech­nique to age wood, move with the nat­ur­al grain of the wood in long strokes. This will give it a more nat­u­ral­ly dis­tressed effect.

Tam­my, Rus­tic Orchard Home

A lit­tle light sand­ing with a course sand­ing block will give it that lit­tle some­thing extra.

Now tech­ni­cal­ly your ris­er can be fin­ished at this step but I was already way to invest­ed to stop now.

I added uphol­stery tacks around the edges to give it a lit­tle more fin­ished look.

Let me just fin­ish by say­ing, I know I made this project seem wayyy more com­pli­cat­ed that it actu­al­ly is. If you’re read­ing this then I hope you under­stand the joy I get from cre­at­ing some­thing with a good back­sto­ry, heck this lit­tle tray may just have a small piece from the bat of your favorite play­er! How cool! Real­ly though, this project def­i­nite­ly does not have to start with a trip to a base­ball muse­um. That’s sim­ply where my inspi­ra­tion hit. If noth­ing else I hope it encour­ages you to let your cre­ativ­i­ty out wher­ev­er you may be!

GET YOUR SUPPLIES FOR THIS DIY BY CLICKING HERE

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