DIY Vintage-Inspired School Map Decor
I bought an old school map a couple years ago from a friend. I wanted to hang it in our son’s vintage inspired bedroom, but I knew I’d have to distress it somehow.
Do you remember having one of these in your classroom?
School maps are so bold and brightly colored (which is great for learning), but for home decor I wanted it to look really old and worn.
So like most people, I went straight to Pinterest to find out how to age paper. I searched for a while but most of what I saw required using tea or coffee, of which we didn’t have on hand because we don’t drink either one.
So then I went to YouTube and finally found a method where a dollar general cleaning product called, “Awesome” was used to make glossy magazine paper look dull. I didn’t have that product either so I grabbed a couple cleaning products I had and neither worked. Then I remembered I had Easy Off oven cleaner leftover from another project!
I tested it out by first spraying it on a paper towel and gently wiping the map and it worked!
I was afraid to take too much color off, but eventually realized it was ok to just spray the cleaner directly on to the map. I tried to not let the cleaner sit too long before wiping so it wouldn’t smear the color around too bad. (Note: you can definitely take every bit of color off if you aren’t too careful so don’t wipe in one spot too long.)
Once I was happy with how much distressing it had, I wiped on some antiquing wax to make it look even more old and used.
It was surprisingly quickly and easy to make this map look 100 years old. I wasn’t done yet though, next I needed to add the dowel rods to the top and bottom to really finish off the look.
This was the hardest part…
Cutting a dowel rod in half wasn’t difficult. All I had to do was measure to find the center, then cut it on our bandsaw. It didn’t have to be a perfect cut, because the non-cut side will be what is seen anyway.
After cutting the rods in half and to length, I stained and clear coated them. Once dry, it was time to assemble the map.
First I measured and drew a line on the map for where my dowel rod would line up. Then I added wood glue, so far so good...
The challenging part was sandwiching the map in between the dowel rod halves and then clamping them together. That was very, very frustrating, I definitely recommend an extra set of hands if you have someone who can help!
Speaking of help, here’s the full video of how I made this map wall worthy!
In the end, it was worth it. I’m so happy with how it turned out and my son thinks it’s pretty cool, too.
Now I’m thinking of all the cool poster projects that could be had. Ha! Now it’s your turn to make something look old. If you try this method, let me know how it goes!
Happy DIYing friend,