After what feels like having pounded in several million nails, I’ve finally finished my sunburst cellar door project! I had an old rotted cellar door that needed to be replaced. I constructed a new door, stained it to match my deck color, and created a sunburst design on it by pounding in brass furniture nails. I topped it all off with several coats of clear-coat to make it all water proof. It looks so awesome. It’s difficult to see the nails/design in the pictures but IRL, it came out just as I’d hoped.
After designing the picture that I wanted digitally, I constructed a template and began by pounding a nail into each pixel. On the recommendation of a friend, I only pounded the nails in half way so that I could then easily tear off the paper template before pounding the nails in all the way. I tested this method on a small area with frustrating results. It was freakishly difficult to get the paper off; I had to resort to needle nosed pliers to get all the little bits off the nails. Then, when I went to pound the nails in the rest of the way, it was very difficult not to bend and ruin the neighboring nails. In the end, I gave up and pulled out all the half-way-in nails. I replaced them one at a time in the already started holes.
This lead me to my light-bulb moment of using my dremel with fine tipped bit to quickly go over the template and drill guide holes at all the pixels. I then simply removed the paper and tapped in the nails all the way. This technique worked great – even though it was labor intensive and took several weeks to finish.
Click on the pic here to see a short slideshow of my process!
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