How to Make a State-Shaped "Vintage" Sign

I've been working on decorating my breakfast nook, and after I (well, Frank) installed an antique schoolhouse light, I felt the space needed another vintage element. The large blank wall was practically begging for a vintage sign, except for one problem: The authentic ones are crazy-expensive.

I wasn't willing to spend a few hundred bucks on a sign for my kitchen. Plus, I wanted something personal: a sign advertising a spot in my hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, or in my current town, Westminster, Maryland. I couldn't find anything that fit the bill.

So I decided to make a sign of my own.

Again, I didn't want to spend much money, so I decided to poke around underneath the porch of my 100-year-old house, hoping I'd find the perfect piece of wood. I found a long board that was angled at the ends, in a shape reminiscent of Tennessee. This was all the inspiration I needed.

I used a pencil to freehand the outline of Tennessee on the board, then had Frank cut it out with a jigsaw (specifically, a variable speed orbital jigsaw). While cutting it, he discovered my "antique" board was actually some sort of dense plastic, probably from the construction of our deck. So much for salvage wood! But it still worked!

Now: What to paint on my sign? 

Down the road from where I grew up was a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called the Court Cafe. I decided to paint the name of the place on my sign, along with the word "Knoxville" and a picture of a pie.

The inspiration for my sign. The Court Cafe closed several years ago, but it now lives on in my kitchen!

I have a cabinet full of wall paint samples, so in keeping with my low budget, I decided to make do with these. 

But first, I had to find a font. I chose "DIN Condensed," for its vintage look. (If you want to make sure your font is truly from the era of your "vintage" sign, check out this database.) I started by painting the board a light gray (I used "Notre Dame" by Valspar).

Laying out my letters.

Then I printed the letters out on several sheets of paper, and instead of spending money on carbon paper, simply scribbled on the backside of the paper with a dark drawing pencil. I placed the paper on top of the board, used the same pencil to trace the outline of the letters, and voila, the lead on the back transferred to the board.

I used a small brush (size 6) to fill in the letters with white paint, then after they dried, used a gold Sharpie oil-based paint pen to outline them.

The painting begins!

I printed out a drawing of a pie, and as I did with the letters, scribbled on the back and traced the outline of the pie to transfer it to the board. I used more leftover paint from my basement (navy blue for the filling, beige for the crust, dark beige for shadowing on the crust, and light blue for the pan). I outlined the whole thing with the gold paint pen, then used a white paint pen to draw accents on the pan.

Finally, I used 40-grit sandpaper to rough up the whole thing, even my carefully painted letters and pie. Frank bought some D-ring hooks (the only part of the project that cost us anything), then hung it up, giving my breakfast nook the perfect vintage touch! 

Court Cafe Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

The perfect biscuit: crispy outside, pillowy inside.

In the South, where I grew up, buttermilk biscuits signify something much deeper than the start of a hearty meal. They're the symbol of down-home tradition, of a place where dinner doesn't come from a can. The irony is that the only biscuits most people can make are those Pillsbury Flaky canned jobs—a shameful adulteration of the real thing. Mimicking the pillowy perfection of Granny's biscuits is admittedly tough. They're finicky little things, requiring both time-honored technique and a real Southern recipe. And, no, Paula Deen isn't the answer. 

        I learned my technique from Margaret Byrd, who cooked for two decades at a mom-and-pop diner, Court Cafe, in my hometown. The café stood at the tail end of Knoxville's main thoroughfare, Kingston Pike, a stretch of which was once a moonshiners' route. Back in the 1930s, Court Cafe served breakfast and lunch to guests of a nearby motel, long since demolished. Later, it became the morning spot of dozens of locals, my parents included. 

       The cafe was once featured in a documentary about Hank Williams Sr., but it was still best known for its food: sausage gravy, biscuits, chicken and dumplings, all the classics of home cookin'. Then, a few years back, as strip malls sprang up in the area, Court Cafe was forced to suddenly close. And my parents were forced to eat sausage biscuits at Hardee's. An utter tragedy. Fortunately, with the help of Byrd, you'll never reach such a level of biscuit desperation. 

    

The perfect homemade biscuit, she says, starts with soft flour, baking powder, Crisco, and ice-cold buttermilk. It sounds simple, but Byrd swears by it. "You can tell the difference between a homemade and a store-bought biscuit," Byrd told me. "We use White Lily Flour, nothin’ but White Lily Flour, self-rising. Our biscuits are made the old-timey way with buttermilk. We don’t add any water at all. That’s all I have ever seen my Mom do." 

     The recipe is basic, but it's easy to screw up the technique. Working the dough for more than 2 or 3 minutes will make your biscuits tough, as will twisting the biscuit cutter—or in Byrd's mother's kitchen, the round edge of a tin can. 

Court Cafe Southern Buttermilk Biscuits

What you need

2 cups self-rising White Lily flour
¼ cup Crisco (vegetable shortening) 
¾ cold buttermilk
½ Tbsp baking powder
Melted salted butter


Put it all together

1. Preheat the oven to 500°F.
2. Sift the flour and baking powder together. Then using your hands or a pastry blender, gently cut in the vegetable shortening to create a coarse mixture.
3. Stir in the buttermilk, only until a soft dough firms, then turn it onto a lightly floured surface. Knead it for 2 to 3 minutes, no longer. 
4. With a rolling pin, flatten the dough to ½” thickness. Then without twisting, cut out your biscuits. Arrange them on an ungreased baking sheet, with each round barely kissing its neighbor.
5. Bake 10-12 minutes, and immediately after removing, brush the tops with melted butter.